Poison Apple
by RobinRocks
Summary: LxLight. Death Note with a Disney spin. Maybe their poison drenched love, this twisted fairytale of most wicked beauty, is all that matters, even when L is dragged back from his grave and faced with his poisoned apple again. Cowritten with Narroch.
1. Act I: Fairietayle: Aurora

Okay, well, I guess I have pretty much officially moved in to the _Death Note_ section; and it was only a matter of time before I dragged my long-time co-writer **Narroch** in with me. Not that she put up much of a fight, incidentally…

Narroch: None at all. Been a big fan of _Death Note_ since it first came out!

Robinrocks: So. Anyone familiar with _Small Print_ – this is our new _Small Print_. **This** is an LxLight extraordinaire –

Narroch: Stick around, you'll be glad you did. But first, Robinrocks is going to have to attempt to make the summary a little more coherent – yes, ultimately this will be a kind of "alternate" _Death Note_ where L is resurrected and the slashy LxLight fun continues, blah blah blah, **but**…

Robinrocks: Yeah. Sorry. At the moment, our summary is kind of misleading. In order to make the main thrust of the fic (the resurrection thing) more believable and powerful, there is in fact a first part or "act" to _Poison Apple_, set during the chained-together arc. Yes, how cliché – but oh-so-fun. :) And obviously we couldn't cram all that into the summary, but in case you start reading and are confused: **YES, the first act, **_**Fairietayle**_** (old Medieval spelling), and all its inclusive chapters, is set BEFORE L DIES. **_Way_ before. And Light doesn't remember that he's Kira, blahblahblah, etc…

Because their fucked up little relationship has to start somewhere. :D

Narroch: And we couldn't resist the whole chain arc… it lends itself too easily to fanfic writers.

Robinrocks: This fic also embodies a lot of inspiration and imagery from _Snow White _(hence the title), the Disney version of _Sleeping Beauty_, and, to a lesser extent, _Beauty and the Beast_. It's _Death Note_ with a Disney twist! And it's yaoi! What's not to love?

And so, once upon a time…

Poison Apple

Act One: _Fairietayle_

Aurora

Light Yagami was anything but an insomniac – it was not a label he would ever have applied to himself, because not only was he _incapable_ of staying up all day and all night (mostly due to his life-long routine of getting a good amount of sleep so that his prestigious studies didn't suffer), he also had no desire to.

He was not, however, a heavy sleeper; he awoke easily at even the slightest noise or movement.

And so, mathematically, being chained to a _real_ insomniac who stayed up glued to a laptop all night and then attempting to work out some kind of sleeping arrangement with him was a terrible combination that, ultimately, was doomed to failure right from the ambitious start of the chain-linked surveillance.

Light had a lot of respect for L; but at night, when L _really_ hit his deductive stride, there was no other way of putting it:

The insomniac detective was a goddamn nuisance.

* * *

The sharp metallic clinking of the chain awoke Light in the same way it usually did at some ungodly hour of the morning; last night it had been closer to 3am, caused by L fidgeting with something at the other end of it. With a sleepy groan, the brunette teen slitted his eyes open to look blearily at the digital bedside clock.

5:07am.

He sighed deeply; not as terrible as last night, but still earlier than he would have liked. L tended to drag him out of bed at around six, sometimes seven if he was lucky; but if the detective knew he was awake, no doubt he'd haul him out of the warm comfy bed right _now_. He closed his eyes again, but not before noticing that the other side of their double bed was, as usual, empty and unslept-in, cover still tucked neatly in on the corner.

The room was still dark, due to the early hour, but not intensely dark, since the first slivers of dawn were beginning to break through the obliqueness of night, making the darkness really a murky kind of gray. Daring to open his eyes a little again, he found that he could make things out quite well; such as the closed laptop thrown unceremoniously on L's unoccupied side of the bed.

L not working? That was odd. Light wondered where he was, but didn't dare look around for him in case L saw that he wasn't still asleep and consequently pried him out of bed.

He put the detective out of his mind and buried his face in the pillow, fully prepared to go back to sleep and damn well enjoy it. However, he was only awarded five minutes of peace before the chain began to clink irritatingly again; starting to pull a little now too. Knowing full well he wasn't typing, Light wondered what the _hell_ L could possibly be doing on the other end of the chain, and dared to open his eyes and lift his head a little so that he could follow the crumpled length of it across the bed.

He was surprised to find that L was actually crouched at the end of the bed, curled up in his usual strange perching position (complete with terrible posture) and with his usual vacant expression dominating his pale, precise features. His face was titled up towards the ceiling, his shadowy eyes scrutinizing the surface of it, and the chain…

Light blinked and then squinted, not sure he had seen correctly— No, he _had_; for some extremely bizarre reason, L had wrapped a loop of the chain around his own throat. And the way he was looking up at the ceiling with intense interest…

Light sincerely hoped the guy wasn't planning to hang himself.

The teen put his head down again, suddenly worried; the hanging thing had been a joke in his head, but surely…

…_Kira_?

But how could he have gotten the enigmatic detective's name?

His precious half an hour's worth of extra sleep forgotten, Light sat up sharply and gave a small tug at the chain; L almost overbalanced from his precarious position, and turned his head towards the teenager on regaining it.

"Ah, Light-kun," he greeted him absently. "Good morning."

"What the hell are you doing, Ryuzaki?" Light asked uneasily, holding up the chain.

"Hm? Oh, this." L tilted his head to the side a little, letting a few more links of the chain come into view, juxtaposed harshly around his pale neck. "Nothing. I was just bored. I didn't mean to concern you, Light-kun; although, incidentally…"

He pulled the chain loose and slipped it off over his head, letting it drop slackly onto the bedsheets.

"That's really morbid, Ryuzaki," Light said hollowly, his sudden concern being seeped away by the drowsiness that had yet to leave. "And with Kira on the loose…?"

"Ah, I thought you looked rattled." L even smirked a little, casting even more shadow over his face. "Did you perhaps think I was planning on killing myself at Kira's will?"

Light swallowed imperceptively; L's uncanny knack of being able to read his thoughts often made him feel uneasy.

As though the detective was constantly setting him up, expecting him to follow this or that line of thought and arrive at this or that conclusion, in an attempt to trap him in some sort of confession.

Although, on that note – given the handcuffs – that probably wasn't such an outlandish idea. Mind games weren't beyond the guy, certainly; L could be cruel in his methods sometimes.

"Ryuzaki, if you're just testing for my reaction," Light said coldly, "please cut it out. You play some very sick games sometimes."

"I apologize, Light-kun." There wasn't a trace of remorse in either his tone or his expression, but Light decided not to pursue it.

"Well, as it stands, I wasn't thinking about suicide," L went on flatly. "As I said, I was simply bored. Though you _did_ seem concerned…"

"That's because I'm not Kira," Light snapped exhaustedly, flopping tiredly back onto the mattress.

"Yes, so you keep saying," L sighed in reply.

"Is it that you don't believe me, or that you don't _want_ to believe me, Ryuzaki?"

L nibbled thoughtfully at his thumb and looked at the ceiling again.

"I don't think I have quite decided yet, Light-kun."

"Well, wake me up when you have," Light replied grouchily, yanking the pillow over his head.

"You're going back to sleep?" L questioned, sounding astonished.

"_Yes_, if you don't mind."

"And if I do?"

Light chose not to answer him and simply shifted to get comfortable again.

"Light-kun?"

When he received no answer, L gave a very exaggerated sigh, and took up a brand new hobby of sending little flicks down the length of the chain so that they snapped against the handcuff at Light's wrist. Light endured it with mounting annoyance for as long as he could – which wasn't very long.

"You are _so_ annoying!" He seethed from beneath the darkness of his pillow. "Go _away_!"

"I'm sorry, Light-kun." Again, no real remorse at all.

"No, you're not."

L gave another woeful sigh and Light felt his weight shift away further across the mattress; he breathed an internal sigh of relief and concentrated on getting back to sleep. Honestly, for the world's three top-rated detectives, the guy behaved like a five year old sometimes.

Incidentally, Light thought that L seemed more fidgety than usual this morning; usually he was awoken by the consistent rustling of sweet wrappers and the inerrant clacking of laptop keys. This was the first time L had actually deliberately antagonized him, and it wasn't as though he could blame his behavior on his getting out of the wrong side of bed – he had never gotten into it to begin with.

Light was almost back to sleep – suspended cozily in that warm comfortable place halfway between sleep and wakefulness – when he suddenly felt a solid weight (and it could only be L, of course) on his back.

Furious at being jerked awake again, Light threw the pillow off his head and turned up towards the suddenly-hyperactive detective, who was actually sitting on his back.

"Ryuzaki, it is five-thirty in the morning!" He snapped. "Will you _please_ leave me alone?!"

"You sleep too much, Light-kun."

"Well, I _need_ as much sleep as I can get," Light hissed, "since you insist on waking me up every five minutes!"

The wide-eyed expression on L's chalk-colored face only annoyed Light even more; it infuriated him that he looked completely clueless when Light _knew_ that he knew _exactly_ what he meant.

The auburn-haired teen twisted himself over underneath both the sheets and L's weight, so that he was lying on his back and could look up at his antagonist without having to strain his neck. L was chewing at his thumbnail as though he hadn't eaten for a week, staring down at him with those weird, incredibly dark eyes of his.

There was something a little unnerving about L's eyes, Light had always found; it wasn't just the way the dark circles under them, caused by sleep deprivation, seemed to enhance how eerily pale he was, and it wasn't just the way his black eyes themselves acted like perfect mirrors if you cared to look into them hard enough, and it wasn't just the way that, beneath the vacant mask, they were completely unreadable.

No, it was that, somehow, there was something soulless about them; as though (although the rest of him was obviously very much alive) he had been dragged back from the grave. That was the feeling Light got whenever he held L's gaze for a long period of time – not quite a zombie or vampire or other ridiculous figment of the imagination, but just…

…Something that wasn't quite _alive_.

"What do you want?" Light muttered darkly, looking away from him and his eerie eyes.

L stared at him for a while longer, as though he was mentally peeling back every layer of him in an attempt to find Kira in there somewhere; and then he too looked away.

"Nothing, really," he said finally, his voice airy. "I'm sorry, I just can't seem to sit still this morning…"

As if to prove his point, L shifted his weight and changed his position from his usual crouching one; now he sat in the most normal position Light had ever seen him in – and incidentally, given that he was now straddling Light's stomach, his knees on either side of his chest, it wasn't really all that normal at all.

"No, really," Light repeated coldly, "what do you want, Ryuzaki?"

L looked at him in puzzlement; although it was perhaps mock-puzzlement. You couldn't always tell with the genius detective.

"Nothing, Light-kun." He chewed more fiercely at his nail. "I'm just agitated."

"Agitated?" Light repeated in surprise. "What are you agitated— _oh_."

Light cut himself off when he suddenly came across the reason for L's agitation; although it was still quite dark, L was very close to him, and now that he had changed his sitting position, it was much easier to see the bulge between his legs, snug against the zip of his otherwise-loose jeans.

_Morning wood._ Light almost smirked. _Ah, so __**that's**__ your problem…_

"Oh," he said again, because that was all he could think of to say. Wow, shock revelation; Mr Cold-and-Emotionless _did_ have genitals…

"What?" L asked blankly, removing his thumb from his mouth.

Light blinked at him; there was _no way_ he hadn't noticed, especially not when he was this restless.

"You said you were agitated, and I said "Oh"," Light said impatiently.

"You sounded like you had suddenly worked something out."

"I… did."

Light sighed irritably; he could just never tell whether L was seriously oblivious, or just yanking him around for his own amusement. If the latter was the case here, then Light was prepared to bet that it could get seriously awkward if he didn't tread very carefully.

"Such as?"

He sounded way too innocent; Light was leaning seriously towards the second choice, and decided that L was playing him up.

"Your crotch, Ryuzaki," he said abruptly, refusing to play the game with him this early in the morning.

L looked down; and then looked up again with a thoroughly bored expression on his face.

"Oh, _that_. Yes, I agree. That's probably the reason."

Light sighed deeply and rolled his eyes; already lamenting at his next generous offer, which would involve him getting out of bed;

"Do you want to go to the bathroom?"

But L's answer surprised him;

"No, thankyou, Light-kun. I will be fine."

"What the hell do you mean?" Light said indignantly. "You're halfway up the wall because of it!"

"I know that, and I am sorry that I'm distracting you."

"Well…" Light cleared his throat and stared at the wall. "I was thinking of _you_ too. I know… it's not comfortable…"

L nodded absently.

"So, uh…" Light could feel a little heat creeping up his face now, and was glad of the dawn darkness. "Don't… you want to go take care of it…?"

"That's very kind of you, Light-kun, but I don't deal with it like that."

Light blinked.

"What?" He asked in surprise. "What the hell _do_ you do, then?"

He immediately wished he hadn't asked that question; the heat in his face burned a little hotter as he realized that he just asked _L_, of _all_ people, how he jerked off.

"Nothing."

"What, you just…?" Despite himself, Light asked the question anyway.

"Let it go away on its own."

Light shook his head incredulously.

"Ryuzaki, that's… that's just _weird_…"

Then again, Light remembered dryly, this was _L_. L, who lived on a diet of pure sugar and calories, perched on chairs as though he was about to jump back off them, had a vendetta against socks and held things as though he thought they were contaminated.

Maybe that wasn't really so weird after all, at least not for _him_.

L shrugged.

"It's just something I don't do. I never have."

"_Never_?" Light found that hard to believe. "Not even when you were _thirteen_ or something?"

"I know it sounds unbelievable to you, Light-kun, but I am speaking the truth."

"No, I believe you," Light replied flatly. "Somehow, when _you_ say it, it doesn't seem all that unbelievable."

"I just don't see the point in it."

"Oh, no, because heaven forbid," Light agreed mockingly, suddenly getting rather annoyed with the supercilious attitude the detective was taking about the whole thing, "you might actually _like_ it, and then you'd be the same as all us other mere mortals."

L scowled in the dark.

"That's very unkind, Light-kun."

"You're the one acting like it's not good enough for you!" Light snapped. "Listen, if you don't want to go to the bathroom, will you _please_ go away?"

"Am I making you uncomfortable?"

Light considered that L really did have the capacity to be extremely slow; he was straddling him, hard-on waging war against his jeans, and then asking if Light felt at all uncomfortable with the situation.

"Just a little," Light muttered blackly, sarcasm congealing on his voice. "I'm sorry to be rude, Ryuzaki, but would you please move?"

"Yes, of course, I apologize…"

Light breathed an inaudible sigh as he felt L's weight shift off him; the chain clinked musically as the detective went over to his own side of the bed and, to Light's surprise, actually lay down on top of the covers.

"Now what are you doing?" Light asked irritably.

"Nothing."

Which wasn't really an understatement, actually – Light looked across at him and found that he was lying on his back, gazing up the ceiling, and not doing much else.

Light rolled his eyes, giving up on him and his strange behavior, and turned over away from him. Maybe L was actually going to go to sleep – in all the time they had been stuck together, Light had only ever seen him sleep a few scant times, usually on the floor where he eventually just collapsed. He presumed he had slept more often than that, but could only conclude that L slept briefly while Light himself was asleep.

His mind drifted off, began to float amidst colors, probably induced by the fact that was falling asleep again. He found himself strangely remembering flashes of the old Japanese-subtitled version of Disney's _Sleeping Beauty_ he and Sayu had once watched, many years ago, and caught himself thinking it would be very nice if L would prick his nail-bitten finger and fall asleep like that, if only so that Light himself could get a moment's peace.

There was no movement or sound at all, and Light was happy to deduce that L had in fact fallen asleep; he himself lay with his eyes half-closed, enjoying the peace of the gradually-lightening room as dawn broke higher and higher.

"Light-kun?"

Light sighed tiredly, his half-dreaming reverie broken by the inquisitive voice.

"Yes, Ryuzaki?" He replied sleepily; he looked over his shoulder at L, who was still in exactly the same position.

Unmoving, unblinking; just lying there, still as death, and probably still with the bulge between his legs, if Light would care to look. He almost seemed to be radiating over contemplative self-pity, and Light was in no mood to empathize with him.

L was silent for a while.

"_What_?" Light pressed, closing his eyes and turning away again.

"Do you hate me?"

Light bit the inside of his cheek in severe irritation; again, he was unsure if this was just an act, or a test, on L's part, or if he was really being sincere. He _sounded_ serious; but if Light was a good actor, then L certainly gave him a run for his money.

"No, Ryuzaki," he sighed finally. "I find you severely annoying, but I don't hate you. We're friends, remember?"

"You don't hate me?"

"No."

L waited a very long time before replying; so long, in fact, that the room had begun to turn the pink and gold of _aurora_, and Light had eventually drifted back to sleep, before he whispered, more to himself;

"Yes, you do."

* * *

"You should eat something more substantial for breakfast, you know," Light said finally, taking a bite out of his perfectly-made toast.

L scrutinized him across the table over a delicately-held sugar cube poised to descend into his coffee.

"You do not consider strawberries substantial, Light-kun?"

"Not when they're covered in sugar and arranged on top of a slice of cake, no."

L speared one of the strawberries with his fork and put it into his mouth out of sheer defiance; Light averted his gaze elsewhere to tell him that he was not biting.

"Did you enjoy your extra time asleep this morning, Light-kun?" L went on, acting as though he hadn't noticed that Light was ignoring him when, in fact, Light knew it was impossible for a detective of L's standing not to notice something as obvious as that.

"Yes, thankyou, Ryuzaki," the teen replied stiffly.

_Did __**you**__ enjoy lying there with a hard-on you were too up yourself to relieve yourself of?_ He thought bitterly in reply.

He was still very annoyed at L for this morning; but it didn't help that L was not, in fact, in a very good mood at all. The carefully-posed questions, belying friendliness, were enough to tell Light that. L didn't care if Light had enjoyed his extra half an hour or not, and if he were in a better mood, he actually wouldn't have asked – the fact that he _had_ was just because he was being poisonous. It was a sugar-coated jab at the younger investigator, and Light didn't appreciate it – it seemed to distract L that Light needed more sleep than him, and he was loathe to allow him the amount that he needed.

As it happened, it was eight in the morning; but L considered this a late start, even though the rest of the investigation team hadn't arrived yet. And _due_ to that, L had no-one else to vent his irritation on but Light, making the latter the unfortunate target. Light could only hope that L would refocus his foul mood onto Matsuda when the unfortunate detective put in an appearance; as he often did.

Light ate his toast while watching the detective finish his cake; incidentally, it looked as though he had thoroughly enjoyed it, but Light couldn't help but frown.

"No wonder you always look so ill," he observed finally, maybe just eager to get in a snipe of his own.

"You think I look unwell?" L repeated, sounding surprised.

Light looked at him; yes, he looked the same as he always did, from his intense, coal-rimmed eyes to the posture he held – the one that would make a chiropractor most likely pass out in horror – to the way he curled up in his chair to the way his ebony hair fell across his bleached face—

"I'm sorry, Ryuzaki, but…" Light brushed a little of his own hair back. "Yeah, you do look kind of sickly. I don't just mean today, by the way."

"You are concerned about me?" There was a delighted little lilt in the detective's voice, but Light was wary of it; it had a cruel tint to it, as though L was subtly mocking the notion that Light might be worried about him.

"I might be if I didn't know you," Light answered sharply, "but since I do, and know you always look like that… no, I'm not."

L gave a little introverted smirk and sipped at his coffee, holding it in that precarious fingertip fashion.

"What if I _was_ to become sick, Light-kun?" He asked. "Would you be concerned for me then?"

Oh, here it came; Light was fed up with these hidden questions to determine whether or not the percentage of L's suspicion of him as Kira should be risen or lowered. He didn't understand how and why L just couldn't work it out that he wasn't Kira, but the more he insisted, the more L seemed to suspect him.

Which made perfect logical sense, in all fairness; but it was damned infuriating.

"Of course I would, Ryuzaki," he answered dryly.

"Would you look after me?"

"Yes, of course."

He watched L look up at the ceiling, knowing he was processing his answers in that horribly mechanical way of his.

"But incidentally," he said, making L look at him again, "I don't _want_ you to get sick."

"Is that why you complain about my eating preferences?" L asked blandly.

"I guess a little," Light agreed, "but, Ryuzaki… Don't you get _tired_ of all that cake?"

"No." L's tone was clipped, as though he found Light's question completely ridiculous – and L was not going to leave any room for argument on the quality of his precious cake.

"I really think you should eat something else from time to time, you know."

"Such as what, Light-kun?"

"Here." Light thought it best to demonstrate and reached for the fruit bowl, taking up a gleaming apple and offering it across the table. "Eat this. You know what they say; an apple a day keeps…"

Light trailed off as he watched L stare at the apple; becoming bewildered as the detective's thumb made its way to his mouth, and a smile materialized around it. There was an oddly happy little glint that had sparked in his black eyes at the offered apple, and it made Light uneasy.

"What?" He asked warily, drawing his arm back slightly. "What's wrong with it? It's just an apple."

Wordlessly, L reached for the apple, making the chain clink against the table's surface; he took it from Light's hand by the stem, holding it the way he did everything else so that it dangled in front of his face. It was very red, almost glowing, and Light actually didn't like the way it looked against L's near-white complexion.

"_L, do you know_," the detective breathed in a soft, delighted voice, "_Gods of Death love apples?_"

"Oh, come on!" Light snapped, slamming his fist on the table. "You've deduced that I'm Kira because I gave you an _apple_?"

L lowered the fruit a little so that he could see Light over it.

"_Are_ you Kira?" He asked, his tone innocent, but his eyes accusing and analytical; ready to snatch up any scrap of response Light might give.

"No!"

"But you sound so defensive," L sighed. "I can't help but be suspicious, Light-kun."

"Why _shouldn't_ I be defensive, when you keep on accusing me of murders I _know_ I didn't commit?"

L shrugged.

"That is just my reasoning, Light-kun. Please don't be offended."

He bit into the apple; and maybe it was just L's snow-white skin and ebony-black hair, but Light didn't have a hard time at all wishing, just for a moment, that the fruit was poisoned.

_First Sleeping Beauty, now Snow White._

Light didn't know what was wrong with him – maybe it was a lack of sleep getting to him – but he knew he had to stop comparing L to fairytale princesses, because while he was only wishing their bitter ends on the detective, it was starting to get a little weird…

And probably, he reasoned uneasily, he should stop thinking how much he'd like L to drop dead while the detective insisted on labeling him as a killer, despite Light's own convincement that he was innocent

Incidentally, L didn't keel off his chair; he simply ate the apple in small efficient bites, watching Light intently all the while. His mood seemed to be a little better, but Light couldn't express any thrill over that – it was a maliciously better mood, fuelled by the fact that his suspect had just handed him the fruit once mentioned in a Kira victim's suicide note.

Light could practically hear the percentages racking up in L's head; it was getting to a point where Light got the feeling that if he ever saw L actually erecting a noose from the ceiling, it wouldn't be for _himself_…

"Ryuzaki," Light said patiently, clenching his fists even so, "have you ever considered, even _once_, how awful it is to be constantly assailed with allegations that you're a mass murderer?"

"Yes, I have considered it once." L chewed a juicy bite of apple flesh thoughtfully. "You asked me this question before, do you remember? I replied that it felt terrible."

"Then _why_ do you keep doing it to me, when you know what it feels like?"

"Because I suspect you of being Kira." L's gaze was point-blank, as was his tone. "Only by a small percentage, as you know, Light-kun; but nevertheless, suspicion is suspicion. Additionally, I might point out that you did not object to any and all surveillance arrangements, supposedly in an effort to clear you of suspicion altogether." L held up his own handcuffed wrist, giving it a little shake to make the chain jingle and give proof to his point. "This is for both our benefits."

"I _know_ that," Light agreed jadedly. "It's not the situation, Ryuzaki, it's just…"

"I understand it must be tough going on you, Light-kun, and I greatly appreciate how maturely you are handling this; much better than Amane-san, it must be said. But it must have occurred to you that if you are chained to me because I suspect you of being Kira, then it only follows that I will question you as such."

"Of course I know that!" Light snapped. "It's not _what_ you do, Ryuzaki; it's the way you do it."

"How do you mean?"

"It's just, sometimes…" Light trailed off uncertainly, not sure whether it was crossing the line to tell L exactly how he felt; but then, L never spared _his_ feelings, did he? That was the whole problem. "Sometimes it just feels like you're getting way too much of a kick out of all this. It's like you think it's a _game_ or something…"

"I am not allowed to enjoy my work?" L asked innocently, licking at the apple core.

"_Ryuzaki!_" Light stared at him. "Taking pleasure in accusing someone of murder… It's not something you should _enjoy_."

"But if my job is to deduce things based only on clues and evidence, with no tangible factual origin, isn't it normal to feel satisfaction when one of my deductions proves correct? It is a natural human reaction, Light-kun; I can't help it."

"But none of your deductions _have_ been proven right yet!" Light argued. "You still haven't caught Kira!"

"I think I would disagree with you, Light-kun," L said simply, glancing at the chain; Light followed the movement of his dark eyes and felt annoyance flare in him when he too came to rest at the chain imprisoning him. Binding him to L's suspicion.

"Your confinement of Misa and I all but cleared us," he replied coldly. "This is just because you don't have any other suspects, any other leads…"

L shrugged lazily, finally dropping the apple core onto his empty plate.

"Perhaps."

Light paused, furious with the detective.

"Ryuzaki, remember this morning? When you asked if I hated you, and I said no?"

"Yes?"

"Well, I take it back."

L only smirked, even as Light glared blazingly at him.

"I suspected that you might." He flicked at the chain. "Not that it changes anything."

"Doesn't my hatred of you make the Kira percentage go up or something?" Light asked mockingly.

"Not necessarily. You are angry, after all. It is natural to feel hatred when you are angry at someone. Unless…" L took up gnawing at his thumb again as he averted his thoughtful gaze to the far wall. "…Kira acts solely out of anger…?"

"Maybe." Light gave an offish shrug. "I'm not Kira, so I wouldn't know how he or she works."

There was a glint in L's eyes as he paused, and then noted;

"I notice you were careful to say _both_ gender pronouns, _implying_ your lack of knowledge of Kira's gender… or is that perhaps misdirection on your part, Light-kun?"

Light wanted to bang his head on the table – there was just no winning with this guy. He had been careful to mention both because he knew that if he had merely carelessly said "he" in reference to Kira, simply as a means of addressing the elusive killer, L would have immediately jumped on him for _that_ too, declaring that he seemed certain that Kira was male, and hey, how convenient, Light-kun was male too.

"Ryuzaki, this is getting ridiculous," he seethed; the detective seemed to be more cruelly relentless than usual today, and Light was beginning to find it intolerable – and he still had the whole day chained to the detective ahead of him before he could crawl into bed and try to forget they were still only six feet apart. "These… _accusations_, if you can even call them that, surely can't be getting you anywhere as far as your investigation into me is concerned."

"Individually, no," L admitted, "but together, they aid my cross-examination of you and your behavior and your thought process because they put increasing pressure on you. That may sound unethical, and perhaps it is, but eventually, Light-kun, it will reach a point where you will either snap under the force I have placed on you and give yourself away as Kira, _or_… the innocence you proclaim will become apparent and I will be forced to truthfully and satisfactorily conclude that you are indeed not Kira."

"And exactly how likely do you think the latter is?" Light asked, daring to put a little hope into the genius detective's reasoning.

L looked up at the ceiling for a very long time, deep in thought, before eventually coming back with;

"About two percent, Light-kun."

Light's heart sank, half-disappointed and half-furious.

"You honestly believe that it's _ninety-eight percent_ likely that I will reveal myself to you as Kira?" He spat.

"No. There are other possibilities, after all."

"_No_, Ryuzaki!" Light snapped, finally losing his patience under L's calm dissection. "There's only _one_ possibility, and that is that I'm innocent! I'm _not_ Kira, I know I'm not!"

"Light-kun," L sighed heavily, suddenly looking very tired, "I wish it were as easy as simply believing you when you say that, but we both know it isn't. I know you and the rest of the investigation team don't agree with all of my methods, but you will simply have to bear with me for now."

"Frankly, Ryuzaki," Light replied stiffly, "I _hate_ some your methods."

"You are not the only one, I assure you." L eased himself out of his chair, standing up. "We really should go downstairs and begin working. Would you care to finish your coffee?"

Light would actually have cared for nothing better than to throw the rest of his cold coffee right in L's face, get _some _form of retaliation in other than dodging cold interrogation tactics; and he might have done so on any other day, because L was usually pretty placid and would probably just shrug – but today he was in an oddly dangerous mood, and although Light certainly wasn't afraid of him, he thought it best not to provoke him so outrightly.

Light drained his coffee, brushed away a stray strand of hair that had fallen across his eyes, straightened his sweater, and then made it apparent that he was ready to go; L looked pretty pissed off by this point, and Light was glad. Clearly provoking him un-outrightly still worked a treat…

Subtlety was the name of the game for both of them. The silent jabs in casual conversation were constantly being lobbed between them and only the two of them could see it for what it really was. Few were clever enough to decipher the tacit yet profound ongoing battle of wits.

Sure, Light Yagami and Ryuga Hideki, or Ryuzaki, or whatever, were supposed to be friends; and, grudgingly, despite the whole "I suspect you of being a mass murderer" thing, and the whole competitive rivalry thing, and the whole L-was-the-most-infuriating-Siamese-twin-ever thing, Light supposed that they _were_, at least by criteria. At times it seemed like a barely-there friendship, because Light _hated_ the way L treated him much of the time and _hated_ to be controlled by the oddball detective and _hated_ to be called a liar by him; and L, well… he just didn't have any conception of friendship at all, and wasn't likely to grasp the basics of it anytime soon, either.

Right now, in fact, Light found himself wondering how the hell he put _up_ with this guy 24/7, since although they were friends, they weren't really… _friends_. L frankly didn't _have_ any friends, never having the opportunity or motivation to even attempt socializing. And if Light was honest, _he_ didn't either; at least no one that he considered on his own level. With L, their intelligence, skills at tennis and, most importantly, the Kira investigation had been enough to spark an interest in each other, so much that they could each consider the other a true friend. But what it came down to was that while L seemed eager for Light's friendship, he was just too good at making the younger boy back away warily, and did nothing to earn Light's trust at all. Light wasn't sure L even really understood what a friend actually _was_, even though he was lax to throw the word about.

Truthfully, Light _wanted_ to be L's friend, _really actually be his friend_; but, to his dismay…

…Found that hating him was so much easier.

* * *

- Okay, most important confession of the day:

I, RobinRocks, went to Disneyland Paris in July, where, while standing in the queue for Space Mountain or the Rock 'n' Rollercoaster or whatever, I was whacked over the head with the inspiration for _Poison Apple _(and weirder still that I hadn't actually even seen _Death Note_ at that point, just knew some stuff about it…). Yeah… kinda creepy that the idea for a really intense (and dirty! Did we mention it was dirty:D) LxLight fic came to me in Disneyland, but that's partly why there's such a heavy influence of _Snow White_/_Sleeping Beauty_. Although… _Snow White_ actually lends itself remarkably well to _Death Note_ because of the apple thing.

Narroch: And I was delighted with the _endless_ notes outlining (most of) the plot, which she gave to me on my vacation in her home country England. (Oh what fun…) So we got right on it, and… well, we hope you all enjoyed the first chapter!

Robinrocks: And okay, not much happened in this chapter (um, named _Aurora_ after Sleeping Beauty, but also because "aurora" means "dawn" and this was kind of the "dawn" of the fic since it was the first chapter – lame, I know…) but it gets way more LxLight-y, and we can promise that because we've done five chapters already and YOU SHOULD ALL STICK AROUND!!1111!!11!

Guys, seriously: If you like Light as seme and L as uke, stay right here – and if you like it the other way around, stay right here. As the fic progresses on to the latter stages, other treats will include MelloxMatt and obviously Near will be around somewhere too. And Ryuk too (yes, _Ryuk_!). It's all one big twisted intertwined "fairietayle", and we think you're gonna like it. :)

- RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx


	2. True Love's First Kiss

Narroch: Hello again! Thank you all so much for the reviews! Those are our bread and butter, and they really keep us going.

**RobinRocks: **Uh huh, we're totally appreciative, and, as such, decided not to leave you waiting too long for chapter two! Yayz!!11!!1:)

Thankyou to: **WhiteLily**, **HammerChan**, **Serria**, **Nilahxapiel**, **MatttheGamer**, **I-kirahates2loose**, **death by computer addiction**, **Naomi Iori**, **hittocerebattosai**, **Koruyuha**, **Dawn-at-Midnight**, **Coolteenzz** and **NuttPea **(and **AutumnDynasty**, since I know you're reading this…). We totally devoured your reviews, and Narroch responded to some of them, under my pen-name, and _possibly_ pretending to be me.

Which is kinda creepy.

O.o

True Love's First Kiss

"Okay," Light said firmly, after waiting a moment to be sure that Matsuda and Aizawa, the last to leave for home, were long out of earshot, "_what_ is the matter with you today?"

"Nothing, Light-kun." L took his time in prying his eyes away from the computer screen in front of him. "Why do you ask?"

"Because you've been behaving really strangely."

"Do you think so?" L picked up a scarlet-wrapped sweet and, using only his fingertips, delicately unwrapped it. Light had spent half the afternoon refusing those same sweets, when L would suddenly and unexpectedly thrust one out towards him without even looking in his direction, holding it daintily between his fingers as though he thought it might bite him. "I do not feel that I have acted any differently."

He gazed fixedly at the brunette teen, candy poised at his mouth.

"Although it _is_ odd," he went on, "that you would be monitoring my behavioral pattern so closely that you would _notice_ such subtle changes in it, Light-kun."

Which in actuality was a scantily-disguised demand: "Why are you watching me? Is it because you're Kira and are planning how best to kill me?".

Light saw the sweetly dipped implication immediately, but still found it difficult not to rise to the detective's infuriating bait.

"Actually, Ryuzaki, it's _because_ you were behaving so differently that I noticed."

"And how do you conclude that?" L asked poisonously, slipping the candy into his mouth. "We have not done anything today that we don't do every other day. How has there been any cause for me to act differently?"

Light sighed, certain that, as usual, L was just laying on the obliviousness act; because it wasn't just Light who had noticed his erratic behavior. He had seen Matsuda and Aizawa exchange questioning glances behind the detective's back, and Chief Yagami himself even frowning a little.

And truthfully, it wasn't L's actions that were different – because today he had perched on the edge of his chair the way he always did, and drank tea and ate cake and stacked sugar cubes with carefully spread fingers the way he always did, and stared intently at the glowing computer screen, lost in his own deaf world of complicated deductions and double-deductions, the way he always did. No, it wasn't what he had done today – it was, as Light had pressed that morning, the _way_ he had done it.

All Light could conclude was that he had never seen L in a bad mood before today; but "bad" was really the only word that could be applied to his current volatile temperament. Well, there _were_ plenty of synonyms for "bad", including "dreadful", "terrible", "awful" and "diabolical", but the word chosen to describe the detective's disposition today hardly seemed important when you considered that he had fixed Matsuda with a look that was capable of melting metal, simply for the sin of dropping a stack of papers Mogi had yet to staple together. On any other day, L wouldn't even have looked up at Matsuda doing that, because Matsuda _always_ did things like that, and how could you be angry at someone for doing something you had fully expected them to do anyway?

It wasn't just that, though. While L had never shot poor Matsuda with that kind of look before (or anyone, really – it was a far cry from his usual corpse-like fascia), he was also noticeably introverted, not volunteering any of his usual theories and contradictions and counter-contradictions to the busy but silent room. He even seemed to be hunched over more in his chair, smaller than usual and curled up in himself, unwilling to unfurl from his own thoughts. Light watched all of this with a sharp eye, wondering in mingled annoyance and disgust if it was just the detective sinking into depression because the more leads he uncovered, the less they came back to the premise of "Light Yagami is Kira". It seemed plausible for L to become morbidly disappointed over the apparency that he was actually wrong.

"You've… you've just treated everyone differently today," Light ventured finally. "Like you hate us all or something."

"You know that's not true, Light-kun."

"Of course I know, and that's why I find it so weird that you're acting like this."

L still looked perplexed, but Light didn't believe that he actually _was_.

"Perhaps I have been quieter today than I am usually?"

"Well, yeah, among other things."

"Such as what?"

"Well, you don't normally have it in for Matsuda this badly," Light reasoned.

"I find Matsuda-san very irritating, Light-kun."

"We all do," Light sighed, "but that's no reason to glare daggers at him over a bunch of stupid sheets."

"Mogi-san very painstakingly put those pages in order, just as I asked him to, and then Matsuda-san threw them all over the floor and mixed them up again, completely undoing all of Mogi-san's very hard work. Surely you can understand why I was so annoyed?"

"He did pick them up again."

"Not in order." L bit down on his candy, making it snap and crunch between his teeth as his earlier annoyance spiked again. "I didn't like to ask Mogi-san to do it again, so I had to do it myself."

"I could have done it for you."

"You were busy."

"You could have asked." He murmured grudgingly. Not that Light _wanted_ to be L's subordinate lackey, not by any means; but he still felt a like he had been shunted, a little hurt that the detective _hadn't_ asked him.

"No, I couldn't. You were too busy…" A malicious glint came into L's dark eyes as the tiniest of smirks manipulated his pale lips, and he finished; "…watching _me_."

"_Ryuzaki_…!" Light bowed his head and took a deep breath. "I did _not_ spend my entire day gazing longingly at you!"

L blinked.

"Oh? But you don't deny spending even just a _little_ of your day gazing longingly at me?"

His patience splintered under the infuriatingly precise and not-so-subtly mocking accusation; yet another uncharacteristic instance for L. He normally wouldn't be so blatantly caustic, instead relying on the threatening undercurrents in his speech to subtly jab at the younger boy, knowing he was smart enough to pick up on the hidden insults.

"You know," Light seethed, "if I _was_ Kira, you would be—"

"_Yes_?" L had actually interrupted him, but there was a sudden feral near-excitement on his white face, a spark of malevolent interest flaring his eyes, and he leaned over further towards Light, so close that their noses were practically touching. "_If you were Kira_…?"

Light had realized his mistake before he had actually said it, but had been unable to stop himself from giving in; and it had been a _very_ serious mistake to compare himself to Kira, to express a common tendency, and, above all, to say it in front of L who could find connections easily enough without his own verbal additions.

He said nothing, but the crazed alluding smirk on L's face remained exactly where it was; and because of the detective's intimate proximity, Light was forced to bear witness to the warped reflection of himself, duplicated twice over, in L's impossibly dark eyes. Two black mirrors solely made to reflect everything about Light that he would not confront himself.

And maybe that was grimly ironic, given that, in L's eyes, all he seemed to be _was_ a warped version of himself; Light-Yagami-Kira.

"_If_ you were Kira…?" L prompted when Light refused to indict himself anymore than he already had. "What would you do, Light-kun?"

A soft, weird little giggle trickled from L's white lips; the delight he was taking in Light's pissed-off, completely insubstantial threat was abnormal and thoroughly unnerving. Light averted his gaze, more so that he wouldn't have to look at himself. He hated the way he looked when reflected in L's onyx orbs – it was almost as though he could see himself as L saw him, as a murderer, as Kira…

L pressed his mouth up against Light's cheek, just next to his ear, as though he was kissing him; but only dropped his voice low, and whispered in a voice laced with real maleficia;

"_Would you kill me?_"

"God, get _away_!" Light snapped, placing his hand squarely in the middle of L's chest and shoving him back. "I'm _not_ Kira!"

"Then why did you suggest that you were?"

"I _didn't_!" Light fired back incredulously, still a little shaken by L's disconcerting behavior. "I said "if" I was Kira. It was a hypothetical statement."

"Yes," L agreed, smirk ever-present, "a hypothetical statement which suggested to me that if you, Light Yagami, had the powers of Kira, you would use them to kill me."

"I didn't actually _say_ that."

"That is because I interrupted you. We are both aware that is what you would have continued on to say, had I not done so."

"Ryuzaki, I was _angry_ when I said that!" Light rose from his chair, furious. "People often threaten to kill one another when they're angry at them. If you're such a great detective, you surely must have noticed that by now."

"I have," L replied coolly, "but it must be noted that all those other people of which you speak – that is to say, people in general – are not Kira suspects; and, more importantly, do not threaten to kill the other by way of saying "If I was Kira, I would kill you". It remains, Light-kun, that whether you are innocent or not, and whether you made that statement without thinking or not…" L leaned forward towards Light again. "…You made a direct connection between yourself and Kira, without any deliberate steering of the conversation in that direction on my part."

"That doesn't mean that I _am_ Kira!" Light argued, giving an annoyed tug at the chain.

"Well, no," L agreed blandly, ignoring the jingling jerk of the bind between himself and his suspect, "but since I am investigating you on suspicion of your being so, I think I am entitled to take your statement into account."

Light stared at him, desperately trying to come up with a response; he was usually so quick off the mark (as quick as L, sometimes quicker still), but L's manner had unsettled him, and he could admit to himself that he was having trouble keeping par with the sharp-minded detective today.

"This also lends itself rather well to my earlier theory, don't you think?" L went on, turning away from Light and giving a few clicks at his own computer; opening password-locked folder after folder until he reached the document that contained his own personal notes on the Kira case.

"Which one?" Light asked grittily, watching L find his place and begin to deftly type.

"Kira acting out of anger," L replied, his eyes unmoving from the screen, his long white fingers moving as rapidly and sharply as lightning across the keyboard. "I suggested that conceivably Kira kills his victims out of anger – perhaps at them personally, or perhaps at the society that breeds them – in reference to the fact that you told me that you hated me when I angered you. The basis for that premise was originally purely because of my suspicion of _you_, and nothing to do with any evidence of Kira I have observed outside of my study of you, Light-kun. However…"

L paused, his thumb navigating its way to his mouth.

"…Later, when I angered you again, you actually went to so far as to proclaim that _if you were Kira_, you would use your powers to kill me. I cannot say that I know for sure how much you actually meant that, Light-kun, especially since you consequently defended yourself by quite rightly bringing up the sociological statement that it is human nature to feel a murderous tendency against one who has angered you, but… you can understand why I would consider your statement to be evidence against you. It is natural that Kira would wish to kill L, don't you think?"

"O-of course, but…" Light gave another distracted tug at the chain. "Ryuzaki, I don't _actually_ want to kill you…"

"But based on _this_ argument, perhaps Kira does not actually _want_ to kill anyone either, except for at the moment they feel anger," L disputed, taking his thumb from his mouth and beginning to type again; throughout the whole of his justification for his sudden spike in suspicion of Light, he had not once looked in his direction. "And if they act murderously on that anger, as you yourself cited that humans will often feel the desire to, then it follows that Kira does not pursue a premeditated pattern of murder, but rather kills on a whim after becoming infuriated to the point that they execute the person who has angered them. This does actually match the external evidence gathered on the Kira killings, since it was interpreted that Kira kills only criminals who were featured on the mainstream television and radio news programs, which in turn provides them with the name and face we have determined that Kira needs in order to carry out their executions. Since their _crimes_ are also mentioned on those news programs, it is not implausible to suppose that the Kira killings are fuelled by the righteous anger of the individual in question. Kira might think of it as a "cleansing process" at the time at which they carry out the killings."

"But that suggests that Kira doesn't feel that anger at any other time, and so doesn't feel the murderous tendency at any other time," Light pointed out. "That means that they would regret killing at all other times, and if they felt regret after doing it once, they wouldn't do it again."

"That is not necessarily true. Very well, Light-kun; if we suppose for a moment that there is no question of your innocence, and that Kira is someone out there we have not even come close to, and we were to pursue them on this argument alone… To utilize the basis that they feel murderous intent at one time and regret for their actions at another would be to draw up an internal profile of Kira before we even know who or what we are looking for. That is both illogical and impossible. There could be any variety of possibilities which could lead to the confirmation of this premise as being both conclusive and wholly true; for example, an individual suffering from schizophrenia, resulting in a loop of anger and regret."

"Well, if you seriously consider this a possibility," Light said firmly, "then shouldn't your suspicion against _me_ be lowered?"

"I'm afraid not, Light-kun." L still didn't look up from his typing. "This is only a theory which may have absolutely no credibility to it at all. Mere speculation cannot possibly constitute evidence."

"Doesn't that go for me too? You only _suspect_ me of _possibly_ being Kira."

"That is very true, but… It was your own actions and your own reasoning which fuelled this theory, and logically that can only raise my suspicion against you, not lower it. You have acted, to a certain degree, in the way that the Kira of this theory would. Besides that, I have additional reasoning for suspecting you, and have done so since before we met. This theory has little to no impact at all on the concept that you are _not_ Kira. "

There was silence as Light sank back into his seat, trying to think of a counter-argument; but then, the damage was already done. If only L wasn't so damned _infuriating_, he never would have said anything that would have indicted against himself so terribly…

Maybe it was just the way he was today; but L could be very, _very_ cruel.

L finished up his typing, saved his new notes and locked his system back down again; finally turning to Light when he was done.

"You must be hungry, Light-kun. Would you like to go upstairs and get something to eat?"

Light glanced up at him through the spikes of his brunette hair, which had all fallen forward across his forehead. This, right now, was another of those times where the teenager found himself questioning whether or not L was actually human; or just a horrible, soulless creature – unrelenting, unsympathetic, unfeeling, completely and utterly _heartless_. How could anyone _possibly_ be as cold and insensitive as L managed to be? To accuse someone outright of being a mass murderer one minute, and then ask if they wanted to go eat the next, as though there was no difference in nature between the two inquiries… Offering condemnation and amity within the same breath.

"Fine," was all Light offered him by way of reply; his tone was stiff and clipped.

L either didn't notice or pretended not to notice remarkably well, getting down from his perching position on the chair very gracefully; which struck Light as an odd act, given L's dreadful slouch and inelegant way of shuffling along, dragging his bare feet. He watched the detective actually stretch, straightening out his back with a series of small, sickening snaps; watched his white long-sleeved top ride up a little as he did so, and saw how similar in color his skin was underneath it. And when he considered the dark-encircled soulless eyes, pale spindly fingers, impossibly thin, bony, sharp-angled frame…

No wonder L looked like some crazed Dr Frankenstein had found him on a morgue slab and decided to spark some life into him, just for the hell of it. It was all the comfort Light could take right now; he might be furious at L, but at least _he_ didn't look like a walking corpse.

Although maybe coming to that conclusion only attested that perhaps he _had_ spent a little of his time today just staring at the detective…

"Shall we go?" L cut into Light's spiteful thoughts, tilting his head a little to match his questioning tone.

"Sure." Light allowed L to lead him out of the room that served as the main investigation office and out into the corridor, the chain swinging between them; L padded along in front, his bare feet silent on the carpet.

"Light-kun?" L suddenly said after a long moment of silence between them. "Can I tell you something?"

"Of course, Ryuzaki." Light's tone was a little sardonic, given that everything _else_ L had told him within the past fifteen minutes had been accusatory and knife-edged.

"When you said you hated me," L said, not looking back at Light, "I was actually glad."

Light stopped dead; and eventually, due to the chain, L stopped too.

"You were _glad_?" Light repeated hollowly.

"Yes." Still L didn't look at him. "But I was sad too."

"How can you have been _both_?" Light snapped.

"Because it makes sense for Kira to hate L," the detective stated. "And if you are Kira, and you hate me because of that… then that means that I am right. I can take satisfaction in that. _But_…"

With a single dusky eye L finally peered back over his shoulder at Light, his thumbnail glued to his mouth once again.

"…It doesn't make sense for Light Yagami to hate Ryuga Hideki."

"Because we're _friends_," Light finished tonelessly.

"Yes."

Light gave a little sigh and closed the six foot gap between himself and L, going so far as to rest a hand on one of the dark-haired detective's slender, hunched shoulders.

"Ryuzaki," he said quietly. "Or Ryuga. _L_. Whatever the hell you want to be called."

There was another long moment's silence.

"Yes, Light-kun?"

Light paused a moment more—

Before swinging his arm back and pasting L across the face and sending him to the floor. It had been a downwards punch to deliberately knock him down, as Light had no interest in being dragged to the floor too due to the chain.

"We are _not_ friends," Light said, his voice as firm as he could make it, given that it was shaking with bottled up rage and frustration. He would very much like to have stormed away at that point, but what with the chain and all, he realized that attempting to would only completely devastate his poise and power.

L sat up, rubbing at his cheek where Light's fist had connected with it. His black eyes were glazed over as he looked up at the teenaged investigator, as though he was recalculating his percentages again even as he sat there.

"Yes," he said finally, his voice mechanical. "I suppose that is logical. We are not… _friends_…"

He got awkwardly to his feet, all the grace of just minutes earlier completely drained from him, so that he now resembled a broken puppet wobbling upwards on frayed strings. Light subtly readied himself for L to retaliate, but…

"Come." L began to walk away again, tugging at the chain. "I am hungry."

"Aren't… aren't you going to hit me back?" Light asked, a little incredulous.

L stopped again, looking back at him.

"No. I decided that I probably _deserved_ that punch, Light-kun. I haven't really been very nice to you today. Why; did you _want_ me to hit you back?"

"No." Light was more floored by the fact that L had actually _acknowledged_ that he hadn't been overly civil to him that day.

"Well then." Another tug at the chain. "Come on."

Light followed him wordlessly; and there wasn't another word between them until they reached the kitchen on their own floor, and when Light finally broke the spell of silence with something mundane, something safe, and unrelated to Kira, friendship; or rather, their _lack _of friendship.

"Do we have any of that microwaveable pizza left?"

"I believe so." L sounded completely uninterested as he reached for the glass bowl of sugar cubes on the counter; he put one into his mouth and grabbed a few more just as Light pulled him across the kitchen in search of the pizza.

"Light-kun," he said after sucking on it thoughtfully for a while, and as Light opened the fridge to locate the pizza, "if I told you something else, would you be angry with me?"

"That would depend on what it is." Light pulled out the box. "Do you want any of this, by the way?"

"No."

Light shrugged; stupid question, really. It wasn't one of those sugar-coated pizzas, after all…

"Well, can I tell you anyway?" L went on, watching Light pull out three slices of the cold pizza and put them onto a plate.

Light looked at him over his shoulder, wary of how friendly L was being after he had just smacked him one and told him that they weren't friends. He guessed that after that, it wasn't really his place to refuse to listen to the detective.

"Yes, I suppose so."

"I dreamt about you last night."

Light blinked; he was actually more surprised that L had actually been to sleep rather than the fact that he had had a dream about him. Given that L seemed almost obsessed in his quest to reveal Light as Kira, it didn't seem crazy that he would feature in his dreams.

"Did you?"

"Yes." L popped another sugar cube into his mouth. "It is hard to tell you this, by the way, Light-kun. It's quite embarrassing."

_But you wouldn't know,_ Light thought; there was no trace of blush at all on L's face. He didn't look as though he had enough blood, frankly.

"Right," was all Light said in reply, busy with his pizza.

"And when I woke up…"

"Oh." Light's brown eyes widened a little, remembering exactly what state L had been in this morning. "It was… _that_ kind of dream…?"

"Hm? Oh. No." L tilted his head. "I don't really remember it very well, actually. It just seemed logical to me to draw a connection between my dream and my…"

"Yeah, I guess." Light twisted his fingers together awkwardly; what the hell was L trying to say, that he _liked_ him or something?

Wait, no; that didn't even make sense. This was _L_.

"Is that… is that why you've been acting so oddly today?" Light went on.

Seemingly forgetting that he had earlier denied that he had been acting differently to the way he usually did, L gave a small shrug.

"It is slightly more complicated than that, Light-kun. You see, I'm a little concerned."

"Well, I mean…" Light gave an awkward shrug of his own. "It's okay. I guess… I mean, you can't _help_ it…"

"No, Light-kun. You don't understand. It's that… well, I suspect you of being Kira, and so if I react in that way while dreaming of you, perhaps that means you represent the entire notion of Kira to me, from Kira themselves to their murderous tendency. And so, _to_ react in that fashion… perhaps means that I am stimulated by the very things which, while conscious, I am completely against. It seems terribly deviant to me; don't you think so?"

Light stared at him, perplexed; the petite, dark-haired detective had said all of this completely poker-faced – no smile, no blush, in fact barely blinking. As usual Light found himself wondering whether or not he should take him seriously.

"Ryuzaki," he said finally, "I think you're reading into it too much. You don't have to second-guess everything in life. Some things really _are_ as simple as they seem."

"But if that's true, then that means I am merely stimulated by _you_, Light-kun."

Light blinked again; how on _Earth_ could L say all this so expressionlessly? And besides that…

"That isn't what I _meant_," he said firmly. "Look, I know you think you're above it, but it's normal for… _that_ to happen to you from time to time. It happens to every guy. It's probably just a coincidence that you happened to be dreaming about me."

"Do you think so?" L asked, making short work of a third sugar cube.

"Yes, I do." Light almost laughed. "Is that _seriously_ what you've been all wound up over today? Worrying over whether or not Kira makes you horny?"

"I wouldn't be so crass in my phrasing, Light-kun, but I suppose I cannot fault your reasoning."

Light shrugged again, retrieving his pizza from the microwave and moving towards the table. L followed him and they ended up sitting at the table, opposite each other, in exactly the same fashion as that morning. L began to stack up his remaining sugar cubes as Light sank his teeth into his first slice of pizza, and there was yet another bout of awkward eating silence between them.

"Light-kun?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry." L looked up from his little wall of sugar. "I'm sure I've made you very uncomfortable."

"It's alright." Light shook his head. "I _did_ hit you, after all."

"I believe you are correct, though." L licked at a fourth sugar cube. "We are not truly friends. At least, I do not really treat you as such."

"Well…" The fact that L was – sort of – apologizing for the way he had acted today was beginning to make Light feel guilty; but then, reverse psychology was probably exactly what L was up to. "…It's alright. I suppose if you've never had any friends before…"

"I do not believe _you_ have ever had any friends before either, Light-kun." L gazed fixedly at him. "I'm sorry if that is a blow to your pride."

"No," Light admitted. "I think you're right. At least, I've never met anyone on my level, except… you, of course."

"Indeed. And yet…" L averted his gaze to the ceiling. "…We are at odds. You are right, I think. We aren't friends, Light-kun. Not really."

Light looked at him apologetically.

"I guess we haven't really tried very hard."

"It's not just that." The detective finally slipped the fourth cube into his mouth, all the while studying the ceiling the way he often did. "Perhaps it is just the fact that I, having never _had_ any friends, cannot possibly hope to ascertain exactly what one _is_, but… I am fairly certain it is not normal to dream about someone who is only your friend in… certain ways that result in certain… _predicaments_ upon waking…"

"Ryuzaki…" Light looked up from his half-eaten pizza very slowly. "You said you didn't _remember_ that dream."

"I know. I lied to you."

"You _lied_…?"

"That is correct."

"Then what the _hell_…?" Light noted that there was still absolutely no expression on L's face, nor in his voice; and still, despite the fact that he knew L didn't joke, and didn't talk about things like _this_, wasn't sure if he should believe him or not.

He wouldn't put it past the detective to simply be trying a new tack designed to unnerve him.

"S-so… so what are you trying to _say_, exactly?" Light asked finally, putting down his slice of pizza. "That you… think you might have feelings for me?"

"I am not quite sure _what_ I think, Light-kun."

"I don't think I believe you, Ryuzaki." Light wasn't exaggerating; he just couldn't see L being attracted to _anyone_ at all, least of all his chief suspect. He was just so cold, so mechanical, so… deathly-white and soulless and pitiless and _inhuman_.

"That is unfortunate." L glanced at him boredly. "Then again… you are the perfect epitome of a most brilliant young man; handsome, intelligent, top of the class at both sport and academia. I suppose it is not unexpected that you would reject this kind of advance. I do understand, Light-kun."

"_What_…?" Light could feel a small, incredulous smile manifest itself on his face as he stared at the detective realizing _exactly _what L was saying; yes, there was no mistaking it. _L_, of _all_ people, was putting him down in relation to his romantic dexterity. Light was insulted, and felt he had a right to be, given that the person insulting him was _L_ – that weird, eccentric, dead-looking little bastard…

And, incidentally, Light was _not_ at all unaccustomed to other boys having a crush on him – he _was_, as L had rightly said, handsome, intelligent and top of the class. He attracted as many male admirers as he did female ones; and he ignored _all_ of them, no matter their gender or sexuality or whatever.

Again, he suspected that L was playing him up; this was a ploy, most likely. Another of L's sick little games, whereupon he led Light along, taunted him, always stepping back out of reach when it went too far… Yes, Light could see the way the pieces were falling. L expected him to get embarrassed, to shirk his "advances", and when he did so, L would retreat, victorious – in fact, by this point Light was actually quite convinced that L hadn't even dreamed about him at all, simply using his not-abnormal condition this morning as a springboard for this rather elaborate one-on-one sparring match.

L didn't have any true feelings for him; L didn't have any feelings for _anyone_.

And yes; that was definitely the ghost of a smirk on the bastard's bleached-white face…

Light decisively placed his hands on the table's surface, hoisted himself out of his seat, leaned right across the table and kissed L hard on the mouth. He held it for a moment or two, noticing that the detective had gone completely rigid in his seat, and wasn't reacting to the caress of Light's skilled lips at all.

Light pulled back slowly, wearing L's smirk; the dark-haired detective simply _stared_ at him across the table, speechlessly one upped.

_That_ had shut him up.

"Do you _still_ understand, Ryuzaki?" Light murmured.

L said nothing; and Light was very satisfied with his silence. He considered L's speechlessness a victory – and an unexpected one as far as L was concerned. The detective really was so very arrogant at times, and Light could take gratification in flooring him every once in a while.

And if he was he going to insist on being plagued by visions of _Snow White_ and _Sleeping Beauty_, then Light considered it was a pity that the kiss hadn't worked as a reversal of the kisses bestowed on both sleeping spellbound princesses. If _their_ kisses had woken them up, then it would have been nice for the kiss _he_ had given _L_ to have put the insomniac bastard to sleep for a hundred years or whatever, so that Light could shut him in a glass coffin in the middle of a forest, or lock him up at the top of a tower, and forget all about him and his stupid, cruel, insistent "You-are-Kira" theories.

But L just stared at him across the table still, his mirrored eyes cold and unblinking; with hair black as ebony and skin white as snow, and Light just couldn't believe in anything he said.

L was not the "L" in "LOVE".

Which made it all the more ironic when…

"Light-kun?"

"What, Ryuzaki?"

"I believe this actually increases the percentage of your probability of being Kira."

"Yeah?" Light only smirked inwardly, basking in the glow of the small victory he had achieved; the kiss had completely thrown L off, since he hadn't predicted it. Now he was scrambling in the dark for something, _anything_, to fend Light off with; only able to come up with a generic Kira threat which had completely lost its normal edge in the face of L's disorientation.

"Yes. Which is very unfortunate."

"Unfortunate?" Light repeated dryly. "I thought you'd be overjoyed."

"I should be, but…"

And even though he had practically shown Light his entire hand, L still managed to slip one last hidden ace out of his sleeve;

"…I think I love you."

* * *

Narroch: Well, yay for that! Hope you all enjoyed the L and Light banter. We are trying to keep this as in-character as possible, and to do that we got plenty of dialog going between them. Because, really all they do in the show is jaw at each other most of the time. So that when there IS action, it has a bigger impact. The same goes for this fic. In other words, this is just a lead up. The next chapter… well you will just have to wait and see. :D

**RobinRocks:** Actually, yeah, that was something I wanted to address, though Narroch beat me to it. **Coolteenzz** commented in her review that there seems to be a lot of dialogue in this fic, as opposed to the likes of _Small Print_, which had some chapters with barely any dialogue at all. It does come down to the fact that _Death Note_ is chock full of dialogue and explanation – more so than action. Hence why the creators of the anime found it necessary to make Light's frantic scrawling of criminals' names into the Death Note so bloody dramatic…

So… yeah. Sorry if this chapter was a little tiresome because it's pretty much "blahblahblahKirablahblahblah…"

But now the stakes have risen, and next chapter, it's time to ask the magic mirror that all-important question…

…just who _is_ the fairest of them all?

- RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx


	3. Mirror Mirror

RobinRocks: Wow, thankyou so much for all the reviews

**RobinRocks: **Wow, thankyou so much for all the reviews! We confess to having had high hopes for _Poison Apple_ and it seems to be going down well! I just hope Disney don't get their lawyers on our asses…

Narroch: Yea, what she said.

**RobinRocks: **And I found a brand new hobby – going to Tesco at 11:30pm and buying chocolate cake. Which was awesome, BTW. It had chocolate shavings on it and everything. :) Anyway, thankyou to: **Hittocerebattosai, Susume, Pen-name-Kitsune-chan, Rooziej, Hammerchan, Stargirl7, Phoenix of Hell, MatttheGamer, You-chan, Nilahxapiel, Koruyuha, Yaoihentaiqueen, Nokturnal Augury, Dawn-at-Midnight, Penguin567** and **Coolteenzz.**

Incidentally,** Coolteenzz **joked that I should change my name to** RyuzakiRocks**. :) Actually, I could be a whole lot of things what would still keep it to the "RR": RyuzakiRocks, RaitoRocks, RyukRocks, RemRocks, RyuzakixRaitoRocks…

Mwa ha ha. And now…

Narroch: Enjoy!

_**Mirror, mirror, on the wall,**_

_**Who is the fairest of them all?**_

_**Who shall be the one to fall;**_

_**Who shall answer Charon's call?**_

Mirror Mirror

_Maybe it was the twisted parallelism of fate, given the nature of L's dream; or something simple as too much sugary mind-scrambling junk before bed; or perhaps just those damn Technicolor Disney movies that had taken to parading around his head for no apparent reason other than L was slowly driving him crazy, but…_

_Light dreamt of the detective that night._

_And it was a warped Disney-fied dream; Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, all melted together with the hard apparency that was truly L, and who remained completely unchanged, unfazed, even in this dream kingdom of animation cels constituting princes and princesses which seemed more vital and true than the waking world._

_From just beyond the hazy skin of his dream, Light watched L stand amidst a scene that was horribly wrong, and one in which he could never fit; it was a scene that Light recognized, because it had frightened Sayu._

_A turret-spiked medieval castle, drenched in an indistinct, yet inescapable ethereal green glow; and Princess Aurora (with hair of sunshine gold and lips that shamed the red, red rose) lifted silently to her feet and walked the corridors, sightless and deaf to everything but the tiny flitting emerald star dancing before her, always just out of reach of her outstretched fingers, leading her higher and higher spiraling towards the fulfillment of that tragic prophecy made at her birth—_

_There was no Princess Aurora now; only these walls of stone, and that alluring green wisp-o-will, and L. _

_Who arose, just as he should, and followed, just as he should. _

"_Ryuzaki…!" Light called after him, his voice echoing a thousand times over; but none of the reverberations being heard at all. L either didn't hear him, or completely ignored him, overcome by the lulling enticing spell._

_Light knew he must be half-conscious, because he could know that this was a dream; and could see the bitter parallel between the way L refused to listen to him both in a dream and in reality. Here, he didn't respond to his name – in truth, no matter how many times Light insisted that he wasn't Kira, L was never going to listen._

"_Ryuzaki!" Light called more firmly, beginning to go after him; L had already started blindly up the seemingly endless tower staircase, still deaf to Light's bids for his attention._

_Here, drawn on by the spell cast over him; in reality, drawn on by his own obsessive desire to prove that __**someone**__ was Kira, and focusing that intense desire on Light. And both versions of him, whether dream or reality, bore the stench of death – the obsession that held blind guidance over L led him to either an enchanted spindle or to Kira, but both would ultimately lead him to his death._

_And led on by that blind guidance, L sought it._

_Light only caught up with him, desperately breathless even in his dream, as he reached the topmost room of the tower; the spinning wheel stood in the middle of the circular chamber, green doom glinting on the needle. L had already started for it, being relentlessly reeled in, his eyes glazed over and his hand outstretched—_

"_Ryuzaki, don't touch that!" Light burst out. "For god's sake, __**listen**__ to me!"_

_With a sudden fracture of energy, Light threw himself across the room and grabbed L's thin wrist just as the tip of his long white index finger was about to descend onto the needle._

_Immediately, as though he had snapped out of his trance, L turned his head sharply towards Light, his eyes piercing and impossibly black and so very mirror-like…_

"_**Listen**__ to me," Light breathed; L gazed at him wordlessly, his wrist limp in the younger man's grasp, his finger still outstretched as though he was going to stick it with the spindle the second Light let him go._

_Looking away from the image of himself he could see in L's eyes, Light wanted to press, even to this dream version of L, that he wasn't Kira; but it seem worthless, and so he didn't say a word. _

_He wasn't surprised to see the mirror; the magic mirror on the wall, beyond the malevolently spinning wheel, even though he was quite sure it hadn't been there before now. There was no ghostly face of wisdom in it; only their reflections, Light still clasping L's white wrist, perhaps in the absence of the handcuffs._

_There was only one thing that Light noticed was different about the reflection; that his own mirror image held a crimson-skinned apple._

_At least, until he looked down, and found the apple itself in his hand. He held it up; this was nothing to do with Shinigamis. This was Snow White – this was drenched in poison, meant for L, and meant for L because __**he**__ was holding it, and because Kira would want to kill L. It made sense, didn't it? The Wicked Queen had disguised herself as a frail old woman, offering Snow White the apple as a friendly gift; and if L was to be believed, he, Light Yagami, was disguising himself as a friend to Ryuzaki, or Ryuga, or whatever, so that he could slip him a little poisoned justice of his own._

_L saw the apple clutched in Light's fingers and finally, as though satisfied with choosing one spellbound death over another, let his finger drop away from the enchanted spindle._

"_Very well, Light-kun," he said, his voice dull and so very dead, "if you will it to be this way. But first answer me this…"_

_He reached up with cold fingers and forced Light to look at him instead of the real mirror; but still all Light saw was his warped reflection. He did so hate the way L's eyes made him look…_

"_If we consider beauty to be justice," L went on, taking the apple from Light's hand, "then answer me… Who is the fairest of them all?"_

"_I… I don't think I understand."_

_L smirked a little, and continued; _

"_Kira, perhaps? Is his justice more beautiful than mine?"_

_L licked slowly at the apple's blood red skin, looking up at Light with hooded eyes through his ebony hair._

"_Ryuzaki, if that's true, and Kira __**is**__ the fairest," Light said, not rising to the detective's bait; instead he reached out and placed a hand on top of the apple, preventing L from biting into it, "then the poison in that apple is not meant for you."_

"_But if that is the case," L whispered, "and the poison is meant for the one whose justice is most correct, most righteous, most beautiful… then I do not think I am morbid in wishing that it __**is**__ for me."_

"_If that's what you want, then I refuse to answer you." Light pried the apple out of L's clasp; and, uneasily, saw his smile become wicked._

"_That apple is for Kira, then, Light-kun," he said, his voice dark and velvet, "and you have taken it from me willingly. Am I wrong to conclude that this is a confession…?" _

"_Sorry," Light replied coldly. "The only reason I took it was to stop you from eating it. Victory over Kira is not worth your life."_

"_I do not agree with you, Light-kun."_

"_**You're**__ the one who stresses the importance of the preservation of human life." _

"_Ah, so it is, Light-kun." L forced Light to look deep into his eyes again; to search for Kira even inside himself, even though Light was convinced he wasn't there. "Mirror mirror."_

* * *

Light felt himself being hauled awake, rappelling backwards out of the dream because of the two black eyes which had suddenly loomed larger than life, their reflection terrifying him into waking. He sat up in bed with a small dry gasp, attempting to dislodge the disconcerting dream sensations. He gave his head a shake, unsettling his sleep-tousled brunette tresses even more, and tried to gather his bearings.

Damn L. And damn Disney. But mostly _damn L_.

He shivered at the dream; it hadn't exactly been nightmare, but it had been so vivid, intense and precise, Light couldn't help but feel troubled by it. Even the way L talked was creepily true to reality, nothing but accusations and death threats. As if their daily waking battle had seeped its way into every pore of his subconscious, emerging as malevolent dreams that continued to ask the same questions of himself. Ones he thought he knew the answers to, but couldn't prove it to anyone. Especially not L.

Incidentally, in reality he and L weren't exactly on speaking terms – they hadn't been since that kiss and quick but heated exchange that had followed. Each was furious with the other, and so had reached the silent constitution that they would give each other the cold shoulder instead of going about their usual awkward routine of civil interaction paradoxically laced with unspoken threats.

L was seething over the kiss itself; and Light was incensed by the nerve L seemed to have, to say so poker-faced that he loved him, even though he should be happy that more evidence against him had come to surface. Light had already decided that he would never believe that L loved any of the things he claimed to, unless it was strawberry-flavored and coated in sugar; and so to keep on hearing him saying it, with no emotion in his voice at all, pissed Light off immensely.

Nevertheless, the teen leaned over his side of the bed, locating L sitting on the floor beside it, staring at his laptop screen as though transfixed; spellbound and silent, as he had been in that dream.

Light leaned back again with a sigh, tugging his pajama top straight. L seemed occupied enough tonight, and it was only… 3:17am.

He rolled over, the chain clinking a little; and, not for the first time, appreciated how nice it was to have the double bed all to himself. Though it was hardly a novelty, he admitted – in all the time they had been chained together, L had only actually slept in the bed next to him about twice; three times, if you counted the previous morning, when he had just lain there miserably.

Not that he _wanted_ him in here; he was much too bony and rarely went the entire night staying on his own side of the bed.

Light spread himself out, as though to make a point; and waited in the dark silence for L to ask if he was alright. The detective always seemed to know when Light had woken up during the night, and always asked him the staple, uninterested question of "Are you alright, Light-kun?", to which Light would sleepily reply "I'm fine, Ryuzaki". It was hardly profound, but it happened almost every night, and even through his annoyance at L, Light waited for it.

But it never came. L either didn't hear his wakefulness, or completely ignored him.

Well, he had his spinning wheel, or his poisoned apple, to pursue; his death-wish to chase after. Even so, Light could inwardly confess to being a little disconcerted that L hadn't bothered asking tonight.

But then, if L was going to sulk, maybe he should reverse the roles and unsettle him; L was too comfortable in his silence for Light's liking.

"Ryuzaki?" He called softly. "Are you alright?"

Light looked up at the ceiling and waited for the answer that never came. Hadn't L heard him? He hadn't thought the detective would ignore such a closed question – a one-word answer was really all that was required of him.

Maybe he'd fallen asleep?

Light propped himself up on his elbows and leaned over the edge of the bed again. No, damn the obnoxious jerk, he was wide awake, scrolling down a web page. He seemed thoroughly absorbed, but despite that, Light suspected that he _had_ heard him.

Light leaned right over him, making him look up; the dull glare of the laptop screen drained all the color out of L's face completely, giving his complexion an odd, chalky glow which just added to his naturally odd visage. Just when Light thought he couldn't look anymore dead than he already did, L had to go and outdo himself simply by sitting up on a laptop in the dark.

L looked at him for a long moment, unblinking, then looked away again wordlessly. Light gave a snort and flopped back onto the mattress.

"Oh, right, _real_ _mature_, Ryuzaki," he said, loudly enough that L could hear him with no trouble at all.

There was another long moment's silence.

"Yes, I agree," L said finally, his voice dull and flat. "I am most terribly immature, Light-kun. I have confessed this before."

"Not to me, you haven't." Light jingled the chain irritably. "I wish you had before you put _these_ on."

"Light-kun, it would have made no difference. These are a requirement if you are to remain unconfined. If you had refused to participate due to the fact that I have immature tendencies, do you honestly think I would have exempted you?"

Now it was Light's turn to fall into sulky silence; he hadn't _needed_ for L to say that. That wish had only been a rhetorical joke. Surely L knew that – and Light was quite certain that he did. L just lacked a working sense of humor.

"_Now_ who is being immature?" L went on boredly, listening intently to the silence.

"Shut up, Ryuzaki."

L smirked, taking delight in the ammunition that Light was handing to him.

"Would you like me to tell you a theory of mine?" He asked softly, setting the laptop aside and kneeling up so that he was level with the bed.

"Sure," Light sighed in disinterest, flopping an arm across his eyes.

"It was before you joined the investigation team, back when I was first forced to reveal myself to your father and the other investigators. In case you were wondering, Light-kun, _why_ I confessed that I am immature at times before now… it is because I saw similarities between the behavior of Kira and of myself. Based on the killing of Lind L. Tailor, I concluded that, like myself, Kira hates to lose and is immature."

"What's your point?" Light asked airily.

L chewed at the end of his forefinger thoughtfully.

"Well, you have displayed both of those behavioral traits also, Light-kun."

"Oh, _Ryuzaki_…!" Light rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head in frustration, the way he had done the previous morning.

"You see?" L tilted his head towards the pillow, even though Light obviously couldn't see him. "That is incredibly immature."

"And _that_ isn't even a _theory_!" Light seethed from beneath the pillow.

"Yes, I apologize. I suppose I phrased that wrong. It was really more of an accusation, wasn't it?" L nibbled at his nail. "And when you add to that the anger theory we talked about today…"

"You can't be serious!" Light spat, throwing the pillow off.

L blinked.

"Well, you are angry, are you not?" His dark eyes narrowed. "Isn't what I'm saying making you annoyed? Don't you just want to _hit_ me because what I'm saying sounds so _stupid_ to you…?"

"Wh…?" Light stared at him, brown eyes meeting black in the cold, stale light of the laptop screen; those eyes again, the ones that could read him, the ones that reflected him in the most macabre manner…

He _did_ want to hit L; he wanted to smack him right in his white-as-snow face, just to shut him up, to wipe away that arrogant smirk…

It was the fact that L _knew_ he wanted to hit him – the fact that L was _deliberately making him_ want to hit him – that made him feel cold inside. It was a horrible, intimidating game, whereby L forced him to admit to things that were "traits of Kira", thus leading to the conclusion that since he displayed those traits, he, Light Yagami, must realize that he _was_ Kira.

"_If_ you were Kira," L breathed, moving closer to him, "I do wonder… _would_ you kill me right now?"

His efforts to terrorize Light into a confused confession were relentless – his fingertip ever closer, or so he believed, to his spindle – L grasped a handful of Light's fringe and pulled it up away from his eyes; and Light just lay there, propped up on his elbows, suddenly afraid to move. He wasn't afraid of L, not usually; but L was acting _un_usually, he had been all day, as though the usual L was absent, and Light didn't like the creature in his place and likeness one little bit.

L was harsh in his methods, but _this_ was bordering on seriously malicious.

Light looked away from L's eyes. He couldn't stand to look at them anymore, couldn't bear to see what L had made him into, what he _wanted_ him to be…

True mirrors surely didn't tell such lies.

As though L knew it was the reflection of himself that he hated, he offered Light a small smirk.

"You must understand, Light-kun, how it seems to me. I know myself; and I know that I am similar in many ways to Kira, though it does not pride me to admit that. I am also similar to you; we have much in common, even to the point where we are on the same intellectual level, far above most other people. I can see myself in you, Light-kun; and that means I can see _Kira_ in you too, do you see? It seems logical to me to suspect you. I know you don't like to hear that, but it's true."

_Yes, I know how you see me, L._ Light looked back at the detective, his warped reflection ever the same._ And maybe it's logic, but… part of you __**wants**__ to see me this way. That's all the basis there is to it, because you can't bear to admit that you were wrong._

Who was the fairest? Not L, hideous creature that he was; tormenting, cruel, and much too arrogant to back down.

"I'm not Kira, Ryuzaki," Light said firmly.

L let go of his hair and leaned back, shooting him a poisonous look.

"How many times will you say that, Light-kun?"

"As many times as you accuse me."

"I see." L slithered away back to the floor and his laptop. "Very well."

Light lay on his back, a little breathless; _hating_ L with everything within him.

"It seems there is no pleasing you, Light-kun," L observed detachedly, beginning to conduct a soft symphony of laptop keys. "I tried to be your friend, but clearly you rejected my offer despite pretense otherwise; I admitted feelings for you and you refused to believe that they were real; and I _loathe_ Kira, Light-kun, with all of my being, and yet you decline to let me accuse you of being so and consequently hate you. I do not understand how I am supposed to behave towards you."

"Can't you just act normally?!" Light burst out from the bed, not even bothering to look up.

"But acting "normally" constitutes acting on one's true feelings," L reasoned morosely, "and I have tried to do all of those."

"Ryuzaki, stop saying you love me!" Light snapped, losing his patience. "You don't even know what love _is_!"

"That is very unfair of you to say, Light-kun." L didn't pause in his typing.

"Don't think I don't know you and your sick little games by now," Light hissed through the darkness. "Do you think that you can force a confession out of me by making me think that you love me? Is that what you're hoping for? That if I was Kira, I'd trust you enough to tell you?" Light was disgusted by his precognition of L's cruelty. "And _then_ what? No doubt, if I was Kira, and I confessed to you, thinking I could trust my _lover_, you'd have me arrested and sent to the execution chamber that same night."

"Oh yes, I think there is no dispute that I would not spare you if you were to ever confess your guilt, even if we _were_ deeply involved in a sexual and emotional relationship of that level," L agreed absently. "You are quite right, Light-kun. Nothing is more important than justice."

Light blinked in the dark, feeling slightly ill.

"You're absolutely _sick_," he said tonelessly.

"And judging those deemed unworthy in a self-elected Godlike state of mind isn't?"

"We're not talking about Kira," Light bit out. "We're talking about _you_. This only _proves_ that you don't know what love is. To use it as a weapon to manipulate someone is absolutely disgusting. If you even _think_ of doing that, then you don't know what it is."

"I did not say that I had ever considered that," L replied boredly. "It was you who came up with that, Light-kun. I merely agreed that that is the outcome I would choose, if it were to come to that. But that "game" of pretending to love you to force a confession out of you? That was your own suggestion, not mine."

"But you _agreed_ with me!"

"I know, I just said that. But the fact that I would choose justice over you does not mean that the love exercised in that relationship would not be real."

"Ryuzaki…" Light sighed, kneading his forehead, which was beginning to ache. "…That's even _worse_."

"Worse? How do you conclude that?"

"Because if you actually _do_ love someone, and then _still_ send them to their death, just because you couldn't bear to be wrong…"

"But if you _were_ Kira, Light-kun, then I would not be wrong. I would be right." L paused, knowing Light was hanging onto his every word now. "And _knowing_ that I was right, and that you _were_ Kira, whom I had sworn to catch and persecute… It would be my duty to put aside my personal feelings and hand you over. To do otherwise would be both selfish and unjust."

"Love _is_ selfish and unjust, Ryuzaki," Light muttered blackly.

"Is that your reasoning for my misunderstanding of it?"

"No." Light took a deep breath, rolling over so that his back was to L. "I just think you're a heartless bastard."

He thought he heard L utter a little laugh; and clenched his fists under the bedsheets.

"Ah, you thought I was incapable of feeling it." Yes, there was definitely amusement in L's voice. "That is not an altogether unreasonable conclusion, I suppose. I thought I was incapable of it too, I must admit."

"Ryuzaki," Light said stiffly, his eyes burning in the dark, "I don't believe you have ever loved _anyone_, least of all _me_."

"I know, I had comprehended that," L replied coolly. "It is very unreasonable of you, however, to suppose that I have no feelings for anyone at all, even if it seems that way. There are people I care about, very much so."

"And you expect me to believe that one of those people is _me_?" Light spat. "You suspect me of being a murderer despite the fact that I keep telling you I'm not, and my confinement proved me innocent, you play twisted mind games with me, you keep me up all night… and you expect me to believe that you actually _like_ me? Besides, Ryuzaki, if you _truly_ believe that I am Kira, as you seem to, then you _shouldn't_ love me."

"I know. It's very unfortunate."

Light sighed deeply into the bedsheets.

"I'm sorry, Ryuzaki. I just don't believe you. I _can't_."

L shrugged noncommittally.

"As I said, that is not unreasonable. Everything you have said against me regarding my treatment of you is perfectly valid."

Light grit his teeth against how icy and unaffected L was about it all; no, this wasn't love. Love was a fiery, passionate emotion; one that grabbed you by the throat and shook you, left you exhausted, but giddied by the whirling thrill of it. And needless to say, none of that was present in L. He was as mechanical and cold as ever, categorical about the degree of it, unsure of the reason for it, and unoffended that Light didn't believe his professions of it.

Light, in all honestly, had probably never truly loved anyone either, but he hated the way L treated it as just another one of his percentages; just another development in the Kira case. Lead detective falls in love with Kira suspect – oh well, put it on file, use it for reference, no big deal.

The kiss had been meaningless, vengeful even; but even so, Light found himself wishing he had never kissed L, because even though it had been spite-laced, the bastard hadn't _deserved_ it.

And besides, when it came right down to logic, that thing that L so loved: Why the _hell_ would the almighty detective L feel love of any kind towards the main suspect in the case he had been brought in specially to solve, given the difficulty and brutality of the circumstances, the perpetrator of which he had sworn to bring to justice no matter what? There was just no reason for it, no reason _why_ he'd develop feelings like that, even if he _was_ capable of them…

Light said nothing more. He hadn't even really paused to consider his own feelings on the matter – whether he wanted L to like him, if it weirded him out that L liked him, if he liked L back – because he couldn't even consider it to be a possibility. Every part of the premise of L loving him just seemed wrong. Incomprehensible.

"Light-kun?" L piped up again after a long while of silence. "Can I tell you something?"

Light had begun to dread that question from L, since everything else he had asked to tell him that day had had dire consequences, or at least it seemed so.

"No," he said wearily. "I'm tired. Tell me in the morning."

"I might not want to tell you in the morning."

"I don't care."

There was a long bout of deathly silence; and then the laptop clacking started up again as L went back to work. Light suspected that he was seething; being the world's three top-rated detectives tended to grant you a certain prestige, by which you could say "Jump" and everybody else would ask simply "How high?". He wasn't used to being ignored or refused – but Light was seriously sick of him today, and just wanted to go back to sleep, where hopefully he wouldn't have to dream about him again.

But if he _did_, he reasoned, he'd just let him prick his damn finger; or bite into that apple and choke on it.

That seemed to be what he wanted, after all.

* * *

Light didn't sleep for very long, awaking again at 4:07am; he was uncomfortably hot and his throat was dry – but the room remained the same, L still typing away on the floor – and at least his sleep had been dreamless.

Devoid of spinning wheels and poisoned apples and _L_.

He lay there in the dark, his throat burning with a sudden demanding thirst; but getting up to get a drink would involve dragging L six feet behind him, and that would most likely entail interacting with him, and Light really didn't want to be bothered with him. It was no good, though; he lay there as long as he could, but the dryness in his mouth became tormenting, and he had to sit up and shatter the silence;

"Ryuzaki, I need to go the bathroom."

"Really, Light-kun?" L sounded completely disinterested, not looking up.

"Yes."

"Why might that be?" Now L's tone had darkened considerably to accommodate a sudden wicked amusement. "Could it be that you are stimulated?"

"Wh…?" It took Light a moment to process his meaning, still sleepy; he gave a frustrated groan on deciphering it. "For god's _sake_, Ryuzaki, _no_! I just want a drink!"

"I see." The amusement was gone as quickly as it had come, ushered out by his usual impassiveness. "Very well."

Light got out of bed as L rose from the floor; and when they were level, Light shot the detective a cold look in the illumination of the laptop as he passed him.

"Misa's right," he said bitterly. "You _are_ a pervert."

L only gave a wordless tilt of his head, his eyes and expression lifeless. Annoyed by his obtuseness – somehow his silent acknowledgement of Light's insult was more crushing than any comeback – Light stalked away in the direction of the bathroom, pulling L behind him when the chain reached its entire length.

The adjoined bathroom was fairly spacious, the glass shower cubicle situated behind the door so that it didn't cut into the square shape of the room; the floor was white tiles, which their feet stuck to, with matching white porcelain units, and it was well-lit. A very nice bathroom, all things considered.

What got Light was the number of mirrors. There were four, one on each wall. Why were there four mirrors? Why was there any _need_ for _four_ mirrors? He had always wondered about them, but now, after that dream, he was particularly unnerved by them. If you stood in the middle of the room, there were four reflections of yourself standing on each cardinal point; north, south, east, west, _surrounding_ you. There wasn't a direction in which you could stand where you wouldn't find a backwards duplicate of yourself staring right back at you.

It had always made Light a little uncomfortable; not because he was unsatisfied with his appearance and hated his reflection, but just because… it was creepy. This bathroom was used only by himself and L; and, whenever he looked at L, he thought it unlikely that he cared so much about his appearance that he needed four mirrors. Yet, having had this whole building constructed on his own personal command, there must have been a reason for L's decision to place four mirrors in here.

No, it wasn't his appearance; bending over to the cold tap to satisfy his thirst, Light glanced at the reflection of the detective in the mirror before him. L was standing almost as far back as the chain would allow, his hands shoved in his pockets and his posture gone completely to Hell; his hair in its usual phenomenal disarray, the usual dark circles beneath his hard eyes, and dressed in his usual uniform of oversized jeans and loose-fitting white top. L's effort where his appearance was concerned was utterly non-existent; he didn't need four mirrors. He didn't even need _one_ mirror…

Though, Light marveled on raising his head again and wiping his mouth on his sleeve, it was amazing how, despite being flanked on all sides by four other Ls, the detective could manage to look so terribly… _lonely_.

It made him wonder; L had said that he _did_ have people he cared about, but aside from Watari, Light couldn't _imagine…_

"Do you have any family, Ryuzaki?" He asked, splashing his face with a little water.

L looked up, his dark eyes suspicious.

"Why do you ask?"

"I just wondered. You know my father, you know I have a sister… I just wondered if you had anyone. Apart from Watari, I mean." Light turned to him, leaning against the sink with a small shrug. "Can't I ask questions now and then too?"

L blinked once, very slowly.

"I suppose so." He paused, looking at the white tiles for a long moment. "Yes, I have family."

"Are they in England?"

L raised his eyebrows subtly.

"Yes, Light-kun. That's an observant point for you to make." He paused again, this time a silent sigh accompanying it. "Brothers," he said at length. "Little brothers. That's all I have."

"Really?" Light was a little sorry to hear that; it indicated that L no longer had a mother or father. But… it didn't seem _odd_ for him to have no mother or father.

Brothers, though; younger brothers. Light couldn't imagine L with younger brothers.

"How many brothers do you have?"

Again L eyed him warily.

"Why do you want to know, Light-kun?"

Light sighed in frustration.

"I'm just _asking_. You know I have Sayu."

"Yes, I suppose…" L's long hands fidgeted in his pockets for a moment. "I have three brothers, Light-kun. They are all much younger than me."

Light blinked.

"Are they triplets?"

L actually gave a faint little laugh.

"No, Light-kun. No, I would hardly call them triplets…"

"I bet they all look up to you a whole lot."

"Yes, I suppose so." L sounded very uninterested, his tone clipped and evasive. "I believe they emulate me, at least."

Light gave an amused little laugh.

"You make them sound like a trio of trainee Ls."

L shot him a sudden very startled look, at which Light blinked.

"What? _Are_ they?"

"No, of course not." L dug his hands deeper into his pockets, and his gaze suddenly back on the tiled floor. "That sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?"

"Yeah." Light didn't know where to put himself now; he was certain that L was being elusive, and that last reaction… "What are their names?"

"I'm not telling you."

Light blinked, taken aback by L's sudden hard, cold tone.

"I'm sorry?"

"You heard me." L's entire demeanor had gone from being interrogative to extremely guarded. "I'm not telling you their names. I don't wish to discuss this with you, Light-kun. I'm sorry."

"Oh…" Light gave an offish shrug. "That's okay. It's none of my business anyway."

Inside, Light was deeply annoyed, and offended, even; because he suspected this was because L was determined that he was Kira, and afraid that he would attempt to track those little brothers down and threaten them. After all, all he would need would be their names, and that was exactly what L had refused to give him.

"I doubt I am authorized to give you their names anyway," L went on dully, "even if I wanted to."

"What do you mean, _authorized_?" Light asked cautiously. "What… what exactly _are_ these brothers of yours, Ryuzaki?"

L was silent for a long time; then eventually turned away and began to leave the bathroom, pulling the chain taut so that Light was forced to follow.

"Exactly what you said, Light-kun," he admitted. "Trainee Ls. Successors."

"_Successors_?" Light repeated in disbelief. "Why do you need successors?"

"Justice may be immortal, Light-kun, but I am not. My job is dangerous. _This case_ is dangerous – you know as well as I do that it may cost me my life. And if that is the case, then I will _need_ successors, don't you think?"

"You shouldn't think like that."

"But it's _true_, Light-kun." L gave a shake of his head. "To refuse to acknowledge death as an inevitability is dangerous; if you believe yourself untouchable, death will find you unprepared."

"Even so, to be training successors… it's like you _expect_ to be killed."

"Perhaps I do. But they are trained in that knowledge, you know; that they may be called into action at any time."

"Ryuzaki…" Light paused uneasily. "You once said… no, you _asked_ me, that if you were to be killed, if _I_ would take your place…"

"Yes, I did." L gave a shrug. "Well, they are young. If I was to die tomorrow, I doubt any one of them would be allowed free reign over the task force, despite their standing as my official heir. It would perhaps be more logical for you to lead the investigation, Light-kun. Of course…"

L looked back him for a brief moment.

"…It would only make sense if you _weren't_ Kira. If you _were_, than that would be illogical."

"Ryuzaki, I swear to you, if anything happens to you, I'll catch Kira for you."

"That is very kind, Light-kun," L replied absently, his manner almost dismissive. "Come, I want to go to the kitchen."

Light rolled his eyes; great, _another_ 4:30am cake binge…

Five minutes later found him spooning instant coffee into cups, knowing inwardly that it would never be strong enough, because this was it; he was not going back to bed this morning. Cake and coffee meant that L was up and ready for the day, and that meant Light had to be too.

"Ryuzaki?" He asked, watching L hunt through the fridge for blueberry cheesecake; and altogether taking note of the detective's quirks. "Your brothers…? Are they _like_ you?"

"I told you I didn't want to discuss—" L started curtly.

"It's just a one-word answer," Light interrupted.

"Light-kun, your persistent interrogation only heightens my suspicion of you."

"No doubt," Light replied coldly, "but honestly, Ryuzaki… I just wanted to know if there are other people out there like you. You're just so _strange_."

L surfaced with the cheesecake, looking at Light long and hard.

"You find it hard to believe that there could be anyone like me?"

"Afraid so."

L put the plate down on the table, scraping a little cream off the edge of it off on his fingertip and transferring it to his mouth thoughtfully.

"One of them," he said finally, removing his finger, "is very like me, even to look at. The other two, not so much. They are more like each other."

"Do you miss them?" Light asked quietly.

"Yes," L replied, without pausing. "Very much so, at times. Why do you ask, Light-kun?"

Light paused for a moment, watching L intently; imagining these younger brothers, these successors, heirs… Little trainee Ls, all mirror images of him…

Yes, and including the real L, that would make _four_…

Like the mirrors; and right in the middle, enclosed in on all sides, would be Kira.

Light shook the chilled feeling away, picking up the kettle to pour hot water into the coffee cups.

"You just seem so lonely sometimes," he said truthfully. "I just wondered… well, if you _meant_ it when you said you had people you cared about. I'm sorry, Ryuzaki, but… it just doesn't seem like you do."

L nodded thoughtfully, rummaging around in one of the drawers for a fork.

"I can see how you might conclude that, as I said," he agreed, "but it is not true."

_You __**are**__ lonely, though._ Light looked at him across the table. _At least some of the time._

He watched him get out side plates and, using a knife, very delicately put a slice of cheesecake on each. Light didn't want cheesecake at four-thirty in the morning, but didn't protest, since the mere fact that L hadn't _asked_ him if he wanted cheesecake seemed to answer the question for itself. It was often hard to tell whether L was just being friendly, or attempting to control the boy chained to his wrist.

Light brought the coffee to the table and sat down just as L pushed his plate towards him; the brunette teen eyed it implacably, deciding that he'd better at least make an effort. L didn't seem to be having any trouble with his, eating it with his usual precise, expert method; cleaving through it with the side of his fork, working it completely loose, then slowly spearing it. He was so very meticulous about it, so very slow and particular. The way he so often looked as though he thought he was in Heaven, as though sugar was the only thing that brought him any real pleasure, was odd, though not altogether unbelievable when every other oddity about him was taken into account.

It wasn't just that, though. It wasn't just the speed; it was the way he put it in his mouth, or the way he drew the fork back out, trailing it over his lower lip, or the way he licked the piece of cutlery clean if there was anything left on it…

Light realized he was staring at him, fascinated by the way he ate cake; and looked away sharply, embarrassed. L hadn't noticed, too engrossed in his slice of cheesecake, but Light felt heat rise a little in his cheeks and concentrated on his own cake.

He could only manage two bites, washing them down opaquely with his own unsweetened coffee; pushing the plate away in four-thirty-in-the-morning disgust.

"What's the matter, Light-kun?" L asked, titling his head. "Don't you like it?"

"It's too early for it." He pushed his plate further away again, this time in L's direction. "Do you want to finish it?"

L nodded earnestly, wordless because of the final bite of his own cheesecake filling his mouth, and pulled the plate over next to his own empty one.

"Thankyou, Light-kun," he said on swallowing.

Light shrugged, sipping at his coffee.

"What was it you wanted to tell me earlier?" He asked after a while, watching L start on his unfinished slice. "I said to tell me in the morning?"

L shrugged offishly.

"It was not important."

"It must have been, since you wanted to tell me so urgently."

"Yes." L looked up at him, a forkful of blueberries and cream and biscuit base halfway to his mouth. "And I don't want to tell you now."

"Now you're just being obtuse." Light took another sip of his coffee, closing his eyes in contempt.

"I agree." When Light opened his eyes again, he found L smiling at him; that sweet little smile that was his most dangerous. "I wholeheartedly agree, Light-kun. But I _did_ warn you. Is it my fault you refused to take my advice?"

L paused, studying the ceiling as he slowly chewed a mouthful of cheesecake.

"Interesting, though," he mused. "You defied my request, just as Kira defies my justice."

"And just as _Matsuda_ defied you when you asked him to throw you his cell phone today," Light snapped immediately, refusing to be "Kira-fied" on such a stupid premise.

"Yes," L said absently; Matsuda had indeed defied him, taking the time to walk across the room and hand him the cell phone, scared that he'd miss Ryuzaki's outstretched hand completely and throw it through a computer monitor instead.

"So maybe _Matsuda_ is Kira," Light went on blithely. "If you're going on _that_ premise, Ryuzaki, there is no reason to eliminate him as one of your suspects."

"Indeed." L scowled; for the second time that day, Light had floored him.

Light returned the pleasant little smile, thoroughly mocking; and yet, L felt the beginnings of a smirk come over him.

The battle was never-ending, and while the detective ultimately had his eye on the prize, he was in no way tired of this just yet; and for the record, he hoped Light wasn't either.

Mirror mirror, after all.

_**Mirror, mirror, show me true--**_

_**I pray you crack before I do.**_

* * *

Narroch: Not gonna lie… I forgot about this chapter. For some reason I thought that all the stuff in this chapter, happened in the LAST chapter. So I was reading over it again and was freakin out because I didn't know what was going on. It was quite funny actually, me being all flaily… It's just what comes with writing everything so far in advance; it is easy to get what you already wrote, and what you are currently working on mixed up. So… yea. Awesome chapter, gave me a freakin heart attack.

**RobinRocks: **Apt proof that Narroch fails at life. And her having a heart attack over a _Death Note _fic would be exceedingly ironic. Anyway… the dream sequence is lifted in almost every sense and form from Disney's _Sleeping Beauty_, where Aurora is bewitched by Maleficent to prick her finger and fulfill the prophecy. Best scene in the _entire_ movie, one that I have always loved ever since I was really little (and _Death Note_ did not even exist) and, well… it just _had_ to go in. Period.

Kudos to you and extra points and a chocolate brownie for you if you are now struck with a sudden insatiable urge to go watch _Sleeping Beauty_. In fact, if you haven't seen it in a while, I suggest you DO go and watch it, because it will sharpen the imagery in this fic so much more for you. I mean, I've watched in for research purposes since getting back from Disneyland like five times…

Also noteworthy this chapter: The first inklings of the existence of Mello, Matt and Near, who will play a part later on.

Narroch: Yay Mello and Matt and Near!!

**RobinRocks: **And thanks for… that. Rah rah rah.

Narroch: Reviews! We love them! And we love you giving them to us! Therefore, you give reviews, we give you LUUUV! (and another update, where stuff actually happens… and stuff…).

Keep an eye on those mirrors – in all senses of the word.

Oh, and as of next chapter, the rating will be going up to an "M". Just warning ya.

- RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx


	4. Glass Coffin

**RobinRocks: **First of all, you should have noticed that rating on this fic has jumped upwards from being a **T** to an **M**. There is a reason for it – please, though I don't expect any of you to actually click the _Back_ button… you have been fairly warned.

Secondly, quick poll: Who was actually inspired to go and watch _Sleeping Beauty_ after last chapter? Anyone?

Confession: We were actually gonna update this yesterday, but Narroch didn't give me her copy before then, and I was ill, so… we didn't.

Actually, I am still ill, though my being ill carries a certain ironic factor, which Narroch insisted I mention in the ANs, so I will, even though it is not especially interesting (albeit odd) – I have always kinda liked _Sleeping Beauty_ a whole lot, and the whole Disney thing in general, especially _The Lion King_, but I got to about ten or eleven and, like most kids, sort of forgot about it all a little. I mean, _Pokémon_ was at the top of its game was I was eleven, and then I moved onto _Dragonball Z_ and _Teen Titans_ and a whole lot of other things in between those…

The point of this boring story is pretty much that Disneyland Paris, where _Poison Apple_ was first created, was like the Disney Awakening™ for me and my friends (go figure…). So not only have I watched _Sleeping Beauty_ like seven times since getting back from Disneyland, I happened to mention to my mum how much I like it, and then I was ill on the weekend, and my parents went shopping in Cardiff city center, and I guess they felt sorry for my being-ill, because they went into the Disney Store and bought me a Sleeping Beauty notebook.

O.o I mean, _weird_. SLEEPING BEAUTY + NOTEBOOK… I mean, they could have bought me anything to make me "feel better", any brand, any piece of stationary… But no. A Sleeping Beauty notebook. Go figure.

So that's my boring-but-odd story of Ubër Irony; and I now have a pink glittery notebook with Princess Aurora on it. She always seems to be wearing a pink dress on all merchandise – she did in fact wear blue for the majority of the film…

Thankyou to: **Pen-name-Kitsune-chan, AutumnDynasty, Coolteenzz, ElegantArrow64, Dawn-at-Midnight, Nokturnal Augury, SimplyComplex11, Stargirl7, Oztan, Lambentness, Itallia, Hittocerebattosai, Phoenix-of-Hell, A Reviewer, Jenna, Banan-nonne, Milk0bar, Kiyoiyuki, Kitty, Rainbowness **and** Kazuni.**

We have 53 reviews and it's all thanks to you guys! _Mirror Mirror_ alone received 20. :D

Though, two things brought up via reviews that I really need to set straight:

**ONE:** Mello, Matt and Near are NOT L's actual (biological) brothers. I presume most of you knew that already, which is why I didn't mention it before, but it seems to have caused a little confusion, so… yeah. L calling them his brothers was just a metaphorical thing.

**TWO:** The _Sleeping Beauty_-inspired dream? We never said that L was in a dress. You weren't supposed to _imagine_ L in a dress, so… smack on the wrist if you did.

And so, to the first M-rated chapter…

* * *

_Drunk on ego;  
Truly thought I could make it right.  
If I kissed you one more time to help you face the nightmare;  
But you're far too poisoned for me,  
Such a fool to think that I can wake you from your slumber  
That I could actually heal you…_

- _Sleeping Beauty;_ A Perfect Circle

* * *

Glass Coffin

"So it wasn't important, what you wanted to tell me?"

L eyed Light surreptitiously through his wild dark hair.

"I wouldn't say that," he reasoned, meticulously raking another chunk of blueberry cheesecake onto his fork. "Different matters constitute importance to different people."

Light looked at his watch; it was quarter to five in the morning. Too early for this nonsense from L, to be perfectly frank – and much too early for rich gooey cheesecake. Now that he was fully awake, he found that he was hungry, though, and cast a keen eye over the kitchen, his gaze settling on the fruit bowl again.

He reached for it, knowing that L was watching him like a hawk, ready to analyze whatever fruit he chose. The ruby glow of the apple nearest him was thoroughly tempting, but after the previous morning, and after that revelatory dream, he bypassed it, his hand hovering over a banana before he almost chose an orange—

It was when L actually _leaned forward_ over the table that Light decided to screw with him; and returned to the apple, lightly plucking it from its perch at almost the top of the bowl.

L shot back to his original position, a range of expressions flitting across his features; before his thumb replaced the fork in his mouth and his shoulders hunched further.

"Apple," he said, his voice a little moody.

"What?" Light asked innocently, shining the crimson-skinned fruit up on the front of his blue pajama shirt.

L blinked; then his expression darkened considerably, and Light couldn't tell whether he was on the verge of a scowl or a smirk.

"I believe you are mocking me, Light-kun."

"Hmm? Oh." Light feigned realization. "Yesterday morning. Right. Death Gods love apples."

"Gods _of_ Death love apples," L corrected immediately, word-for-word. "Though you seem to like them too, Light-kun."

"They're good for you."

"Hmm." L scraped at his thumbnail with his teeth distractedly. "Or perhaps _you_ are a God of Death too?"

"Me? A Shinigami?" Light laughed airily. "Come on, Ryuzaki."

"That is not what I said," L replied dully. "I specified God of Death, but not the mythical kind. "God of Death" could be _anyone_ with the power to take life. _Kira_, for example."

Light had seen it coming; he sank his teeth into the apple's crisp flesh with a satisfying _crunch_ as the word "Kira" – L's Word-of-the-Decade, it seemed – slithered off the detective's tongue. The weak resistance of the fruit felt good, eased his frustration; he snapped the chunk of apple in two with his teeth, and it soothed his urge to deck L with the waffle iron.

"Ryuzaki," he said patiently, "if you think I'm mocking you, so far as I took the apple from the bowl deliberately to antagonize you, then surely that argument has no basis, since it wasn't through any personal preference that I chose the apple."

L only smiled oddly at him.

"You _do_ seem to be enjoying it, though."

Light shrugged, dipping his sharp white teeth deep into it again; amused by the way L watched him, fascinated.

"Tastes good," he said, swallowing.

L nodded distractedly, taking the last bite of Light's slice of cheesecake.

"There was no fourth note, you know," he said carefully, plucking the topic shift from seemingly nowhere. "The encoded suicide notes from the Kira victims, I mean. I lied when I said there were four."

Light gave a small nod.

"I thought as much."

"Oh, really?" L's eyes glinted.

"Yeah." Light pressed his lips against the apple's firm skin thoughtfully. "I mean, when you added that fourth one, and rearranged the other three according to their print numbers… "L do you know love apples? Gods of Death have red hands" still doesn't make much sense. The extraction of the noun phrase renders the first sentence completely senseless, since it has no subject. And there's absolutely no correlation between that sentence and the second one."

"Mm." L nodded again. "That's a very… educated observation, Light-kun. Although, of course, I could expect nothing less from _you_."

Light was pretty sure that was actually a jab rather than a compliment, and was quick to fire back;

"You're _still_ going on about apples, though."

"I know." L took a lazy sip of morbidly-sweet coffee. "They're an interesting fruit, don't you think? Very steeped in legend. The Bible, for example, where they are presented as the Forbidden Fruit, or…" He paused thoughtfully, silent for just enough time that Light felt a premonitory chill scuttle down his spine. "…_Snow White_. And this Shinigami message, of course."

Light shrugged, the Snow White reference jangling his nerves badly; maybe he _was_ giving himself away a little too much here. Not about being Kira, obviously, because how could you give yourself away for doing something you knew you were innocent of? But Snow White, and apples, and that dream, and the mirrors… the connections, and double connections, and archetypal recurrences were imparting that unsettling déjà vu that seemed almost like a warning.

"But I did wonder, Light-kun," L went on, "if you know what a love apple actually is?"

Light shook his head.

"Never heard of them, at least not before you showed me the notes."

"No," L said absently. "I have no idea either."

"There's no such thing, just… The rearrangement causes "love" to change from a verb into a noun. It doesn't actually make it a thing."

"Do you think so?" L was giving the kitchen floor a rather melancholy once-over with his opaque gaze, paying no real attention to Light at all. "A pity then."

"Why's that?"

"_Love apple_. It would probably be sweet."

"You want one?"

"Yes."

Light sighed, silent and thinking for a moment; he really couldn't stand for L to go sinking into another depressive state simply because there was no such thing as a "love apple". After a long instant's consideration, he eventually simply offered his own half-eaten apple out across the table.

"Here, then," he said dryly.

L looked down at it; then looked at him, and back and forth several times, puzzled.

"I don't understand, Light-kun."

"Well, if I'm willing to give my apple to you, then surely it's done out of love," Light said, careful to keep the humor out of his voice. "Or… friendship, at least. And, if you're willing to eat it, after I've chewed all over it…"

"But I can't take your apple, Light-kun. You were enjoying it."

"That's the _point_." His brown eyes met L's unreadable black ones. "Just take it."

The detective did so, actually clutching it properly, the rounded flesh of the uneaten part against his palm. Light had only ever seen him hold one other thing in a proper grip like that, and that had been a tennis racquet.

"Are you sure?" He asked; which took Light by surprise. The brunette teen was used to giving things he didn't want to finish to L – the cheesecake was a prime example, and L, as a rule, _never_ asked him if he was sure about not wanting it.

"Of course I'm sure. That's why it's a love apple – because it was mine, and I want you to have it."

"You said you didn't know—"

"Ryuzaki, I made it up," Light interrupted impatiently. "There's no such thing as a _real_ love apple, so who is to say that _that_ can't be one?"

"I see." L raised the ruby-hued fruit to his mouth, cupping it in both hands, the way…

…Snow White did.

And then, the final nail:

"Poisoned?" L asked softly, looking up through his hair at Light, the merest trace of a smirk gracing his pale lips.

Light met his gaze with a small, equal smirk on his own; really, this was L, after all. Should he even be _surprised_?

"Perhaps," was his reply.

L only smiled to himself and bit into the apple, taking the shape of Light's mouth out of it and into his own. Light watched him over his coffee; torn between wondering what he would do if L actually collapsed on the floor now, choked on enchanted poison, and a sudden odd impulsive desire to…

…_kiss_ him again…

Not out of malice this time; no, he didn't know _what_ it was. Maybe the dream, maybe the mirrors, maybe L's bizarre oral fixation (he had decided that was what it had to be, the way the detective _always_ seemed to have _something_ in his mouth), or maybe it was just the ruby red apple distinctly juxtaposed against the snow white skin and ebony black hair…

He didn't touch him, though; there was a table between them, and he was too tired to both lean across it, and explain himself once it was over.

Besides… Light gave a small shake of his head, as though trying to snap some sense into himself. This was _L_. He had spent almost an hour earlier arguing with him about love, and how he felt a lack thereof.

_Kissing_ him for no reason at all, with nothing analytical or logical motivating it… It was out of the question, really. Love for a little brother and a sexual love were completely different, and although L himself had actually expressed the notion that he couldn't tell the difference between _friendship_ and sexual feelings, both of which concerning Light, and having never bothered with either of them before… Light was still certain he couldn't possibly be as clueless as all that.

He was the world's three top detectives, for god's sakes.

And even if he _hadn't_ been… Well, it didn't take a genius (although, ironically, they both certainly _were_ that) to figure out that they were no longer simply fighting a battle of wits and intellect, or games of mind and power; they were ultimately fighting the beginnings of an attraction, one that bled from deep within – a slow, sweet poison that threatened to taint their standings as investigator and suspect, as rivals, even simply as _friends_.

Stark as fresh blood on snow; any attraction between Kira and L could only ever bleed poison. That was more logical than any of L's theories, or any of Light's counter-theories, anything stacked and arranged and paperclipped, black-on-white _hard logical evidence._

The question was whether or not they chose to ignore that; ignore the fact that it was a boundary that should not be crossed, a realm as forbidden as anything dictated by a prohibited apple, laced with poison or not.

Though that seemed ironic; looking at L, _knowing_ that he shouldn't, because he was L and L thought _he_ was Kira, and _seeing_ that forbidden fruit in his hand, as though a symbol to remind him that he should stay back, lest he break the only thing – perhaps that same enchanted glass – that kept them apart…

_That_ was what made Light want him all the more.

"Ryuzaki," he said, "now you owe me."

"For the apple?" L tore at it with his teeth, bringing another chunk away with a brusque, crisp little sound; slowly pulling it over his bottom lip into his mouth with his front teeth.

Talented mouth.

Light clenched a fist, shaking the observation away and deciding there and then that he couldn't possibly _bear_ it if L said that he loved him again; because Light didn't believe him, he _still_ didn't believe him, and perhaps he was beginning to wish that he _could_…

"I didn't realize a _love apple_ came with a price," L went on blandly through a mouthful of apple.

"Not really, but… what you were going to tell me…?"

"Ah." L smirked and swallowed. "I see. Light-kun does not like to be kept hanging…"

Light could have sworn L had paused, just for a split-second, before saying "hanging"; but he couldn't be sure. Even with the apple in his hand, and the white skin and black hair, Light found himself thinking that perhaps his comparison of L to Snow White herself was hideously wrong; was this manipulator before him not the Wicked Queen, out to destroy an innocent person that s/he saw as a sinner? For Snow White, it was the sin of being more beautiful; for Light, it was the sin of being Kira, or such was L's belief, anyway. And _like_ the Queen, it seemed L would rest at nothing to ensure that the "sinner" was punished. Perhaps it was _L_ who stood obsessively asking who the fairest was, just _who_ Justice was, and when he didn't get the answer he wanted, he vowed to destroy Kira, the One of More Beautiful Justice, just to reclaim his title. Maybe _that_ was why… _all the mirrors_…

"Very well." Another deep, indulgent bite of apple; he seemed to be enjoying it, but Light wasn't sure if it was because he just liked apples, or because it had been a gift from Light himself. "I will tell you, Light-kun."

He leaned across the table, lowering his voice a little, as though it was a very big secret.

"That kiss you gave me today," he said, his gaze on the apple rather than Light, "was my first."

"Really?" Light was initially surprised; but after a few moments, the shock trailed away and died off. No, that didn't seem ludicrous at all, actually. L was so… cold, evasive, introverted, eccentric, _uninterested_…

Yes, that was it. Bizarre as L was, Light didn't think it was because _nobody_ had _ever_ been in any way, shape or form attracted to him; it was because he was so unresponsive. He hadn't returned Light's kiss today, and Light hadn't expected that he would have done. He had kissed him out of spiteful impulse, not because he wanted to kiss him and in turn feel him kiss back… In fact, Light had known it was safe to kiss him _because_ he had known that L wouldn't respond to it.

And if you knew L on a level deep enough to _want_ to become intimate with him, then you most certainly knew him on a deep enough level to know that he would never respond to you.

"Although," L went on lightly, still looking intently at the apple, "I know that you did not mean anything by it. It was just your form of retaliation."

"I… I'm sorry." Light didn't know what else to say but that, because he couldn't deny it.

"Oh, don't be." Yet another bite; there was very little of the apple's flesh left on the core now. "It was a very interesting retaliation. I am still not sure what to make of it. I believe it raises my suspicion, but…"

L faded back into thought.

"No, I meant… I'm sorry your first kiss was… _meaningless_…"

L gave a sudden very small and very rare laugh; it was ice-cold, though not utterly devoid of humor.

"Light-kun, _first kiss_…? The _notion_ of such a thing is meaningless to me. To determine the meaning behind it, to _categorize_ it, based on location and sentiment and the person it was with is ridiculous, don't you think?"

Light shrugged uneasily.

"That's what people do, Ryuzaki."

"Hmm, I know. An interesting observation of humankind."

"What is? Kissing?"

"Sexual behavior." L finally looked Light right in the eyes across the table. "The traditions people attach to it, the behavior of people in relation to discussion and practice of it… Some believe sex is a gift, others believe it's a sin; each religion has its own rules concerning it; there are unwritten human codes of morality concerning it… It is one of the basic human needs, Light-kun. It governs much of the psychology and sociology of humankind."

Light nodded wordlessly; trying to ignore how odd and wrong it seemed for straight-laced L to be talking about sex like this.

"It drives people in uncontrollable ways," L went on blithely. "When you consider the number of the criminals that Kira has judged, even; many of them were rapists, sex predators, pedophiles, dealers in illegal pornography… If brought before a court, it would perhaps not be unreasonable for the defense to plead leniency on account of sexual drive being a need as basic as hunger, which in turn might cause you to steal food; or perhaps plead leniency based on mental disorder. It's part of human design to desire it, resulting in the propagation of the species; therefore it is an important part of human life. It is understandable that humans attach certain significances to it, such as legal age limits, or rules contained within marriage or religion or whatever it may be, _but_… those in turn, like the drive itself, can control people."

"I… I don't think I quite understand what you're getting at, Ryuzaki."

"Very well." L averted his gaze for a moment, thinking. "Consider an adulterer who cheats on his wife; he, as an adult male, is bigger and stronger than her, and would have no trouble overpowering her, were she to instigate him into doing so. However… on finding himself another woman, he is still careful to keep it a secret from his wife, going all out to ensure that she does not discover his infidelity. Why does he do this, when he could easily threaten her not to protest? It's because it's a marital law that, once married, you should remain faithful to your husband or wife. It's that law that dictates him, and his own unfulfilled sexual desires that he feels he must seek elsewhere. It must be concluded that he would rather be free to be with this other woman than sneak behind his wife's back, but society prevents him from being so; so instead, because of needless desires, he is forced into a secretive and dishonest lifestyle which damages not only his wife, but also, to a certain degree, both himself and the other woman."

"Ryuzaki…" Light was shaking his head in bewilderment. "That's all very true, but… what's your point?"

"Sex is human enslavement," L said simply, fixing Light again with his cold, hard, merciless gaze. "And enslavement is something I have no interest in, Light-kun."

Light blinked, startled by the way L phrased it. _Enslavement_? Yes, it was a need, but… surely that was a rather _extreme_ way of putting it…?

Although… Sharp even this early in the morning, Light realized that L had just slipped him something else;

"You're a virgin."

L looked at him boredly.

"Of course."

Light gave an inward sigh – just another oddity to add to the _stack_ of oddities that made up L. He couldn't think of a single other twenty-something year old male, probably in the entire _world_, who would admit to being a virgin; and say it as though he thought that the recipient in question should have _realized_ that he was a virgin, and with a level of contempt in his tone that exhibited a certain notion that it was out of the question for him to be anything _but_ a virgin.

And probably, given his personal philosophy, thought that everyone _else_ should be a virgin too.

"You seem surprised," L went on flatly.

"I know." Light looked at him. "I suppose I _shouldn't_ be, though. If that kiss today was your first, then I guess it makes _sense_ for you to be a virgin…"

L gave a slow, blasé nod.

"It is just not something that interests me."

"But…" Light was confused now. "You said… _you're_ the one who keeps saying that you _love_ me…"

L gazed at him point-blank.

"That doesn't mean I want to have a sexual relationship with you, Light-kun."

_No, I don't think I believe that either…_

Although Light wasn't sure _what_ to think anymore. If L was simply trying to confuse him, he was doing a very good job of it, even if Light didn't see how this could possibly relate to him being Kira. This was a game, just another of L's sick games, that's all it ever was… Always around in meaningless circles – erotic dreams, declarations of love, then denying that love equaled sexual lust…

_No_.

Light saw it. Yes, _that_ was it… He almost smiled. Light had awakened in L feelings the detective had suppressed his entire life, because of his desire to remain "un-enslaved" by human needs, and, not knowing how to deal with them, L was simply denying them. He would never _admit_ it, Light knew. Yes, cold, harsh little L could want him with all his heart, but he would never, ever say; his pride and his arrogant philosophy would never allow it.

He could confess to love; but lust? No, lust was too basic, too carnal, too _unintelligent_ for L. Many of those whom Kira had judged had felt lust – that was why Kira had punished them, after all.

"You must agree, though, Light-kun," L said blandly. "Humans are very silly over these matters; fussing about dates and kissing and the significance of the loss of their virginity. Animals are far more simplistic about it."

"Well… maybe you're correct, that these notions have been culturally conditioned in humans," Light agreed uneasily, "but it's very important to some people, Ryuzaki."

"I know. That is my problem."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, as you said, it is culturally conditioned in humans to attach extreme significance to the loss of their virginity; the clothing, the location, the person it was with. And of course it follows that you would attach significance _to_ that person. It's something I have observed, Light-kun, that humans often feel _indebted_ to that person, as though they owe them something for being their first. It works in both directions, of course, but…"

"So what are you _saying_?"

"Virginity is freedom." L sipped at his coffee. "You aren't attached to anyone, you don't owe anyone anything… I couldn't be indebted to someone like that, Light-kun. Owing things to people is dangerous – they can hurt you."

"Ryuzaki, that's…" Light shook his head incredulously. "…_Insane_."

L shrugged.

"It's the way I have always seen it. You saying that won't change my view."

"But… that the person you… they'd _hurt_ you?"

"They would have the power to, certainly." L gave an absent rattle of the chain. "Your enemies are often the closest to your heart."

"Ryuzaki, that's absolutely _stupid_."

L shot him a very cold look.

"Well, I didn't ask _you_ to follow my philosophy."

Light gave a deep sigh.

"No, I suppose not…" Though the teenager was beginning to get pissed off; yes, here was L, all high-and-mighty about how sex – that dreadful peasants' past-time – was beneath him, and how virginity constituted freedom from the poison of humankind, and how _he_ was free and intended to stay that way, thanks, and yet…

_He_ had taken _Light's_ freedom away – his actual physical freedom, which surely was worth more than L's arrogance concerning sexual gratification, without so much as a second thought.

Double standards, though; that was typical of L. He was infuriatingly hypocritical at times – Light often wondered if he'd even be surprised if, after all this, _L_ turned out to be Kira.

Acting as Kira _and_ L; that would certainly give you the power to get away with it that was for sure…

Though back to the matter at hand, perhaps it was fitting; Light couldn't imagine L expressing pleasure any more than the satisfied smile that came across his face whenever he ate cake, or the indulgent smirk whenever he cornered Light with his merciless Kira accusations.

Wild abandoned pleasure?

He watched L gazing motionlessly at the reflection of himself in his coffee cup, his eyes very wide, but very glazed, indicating that his thoughts were elsewhere.

Hopeless, it seemed. Too unresponsive, too uninterested, too prohibiting of _himself. _No, there was no way.

He would never be anyone's.

He would stay within his glass coffin, observing the things that went on beyond it through the crystal clear walls; but he believed his confinement to be his freedom, since those things outside could never touch or taint him.

And it seemed as though, unlike those true princesses, enchanted by the spells of those most wicked, even a kiss – true love's first kiss – had not freed him; awakened him from his poisoned slumber.

The difference was, L didn't _want_ to be awakened.

* * *

Perhaps it was all Matsuda's fault. Yes, it was easy to blame anything and everything on Matsuda, because the guy set himself up for it, but, after all, it was _Matsuda_ who had suggested they all go out and get pizza from around the block.

Pizza. American, Chicago-style. Matsuda talked about it as though it was sliced bread or something; the most absolutely best thing ever. Why have okonomiyaki or doriyaki when you could have a two-inch thick oil-drenched bread base, with an extra inch of melted cheese and tomato puree and a multitude of other calorie-laden goodies galore on top of it? Heart-attack-a-stack, which was ironic, given Kira and his cute little quirks…

Matsuda had announced it to the room, the idea that that was what they should do for lunch. Twenty minutes, apparently, was all it would take. He'd timed it before, of course, once, on his way home. Five minutes to get there, fifteen to order and get the pizza. Add the five back on to walk back to the investigation building.

Aizawa corrected him and said that was twenty-five, and then asked if Matsuda instead had a phone number. But they didn't do phone orders, apparently. Aizawa argued that there was a perfectly good noodle bar across the street, and Matsuda whined and said they always had noodles from the noodle bar, and that this pizza was really, _really_ good. Just when it looked like Matsuda was about to lose – since everyone else hadn't even _looked_ up, let alone backed him up – Mogi agreed that he would like to get the pizza too, at which Matsuda perked up and ganged up with him on Aizawa. Cornered, Aizawa asked Chief Yagami for his opinion; busy, the chief waved his hand irritably and told him to let Matsuda and Mogi do what they wanted.

Matsuda high-fived the usually impassive Mogi; Aizawa sighed; Chief Yagami rustled some sheets; and Light looked up from his research just long enough to see L crush a sugar cube between his white fingers. Most of it crumbled to the desk, though he licked what was left off his fingertips, his expression utterly unreadable. He seemed completely unaware that Light was watching him, so the latter averted his eyes back to his work.

It was surprising though, when, at 12:15pm, Chief Yagami stacked his sheets and got up to retrieve his jacket, joining Matsuda, Aizawa and Mogi at the door.

"You're coming too, Chief?" Matsuda asked, sounding surprised.

Chief Yagami gave a shrug.

"I thought we all were." He turned back to look across the room; Light was still typing and L was still…

…Eating sugar cubes and staring off into space.

"Hey, you two!" He called. "Come on!"

Light looked up and over his shoulder to see his father beckoning to him. He gave a nod and saved his work – standing up, and, completely forgetting the chain, starting to walk away.

L either hadn't heard Chief Yagami, or hadn't acknowledged him, as he remained in his seat, oblivious; although it made no difference when he was suddenly hauled off-balance and sideways, the only thing stopping him from going onto the floor being the arm of his chair. Light, meanwhile, hissed and massaged his wrist, trying to ease the pain that was a result of forgetting that L was still attached to him via the handcuffs.

"Ryuzaki!" Light snapped, giving a tug at the chain. "Come on!"

L shook his head, recovering his position on his seat.

"No, Light-kun. I'm not going."

Light blinked at him.

"What do you mean, you're not going?"

"I mean that I am staying here, Light-kun."

Exasperated, Light flailed his handcuffed wrist.

"And what about _me_?"

L looked at him blankly.

"I'm sorry, I suppose you'll have to stay here too."

"But I'm hungry!" Light raged. "Stop being so selfish!"

"I'm busy." L looked away from him.

"You don't _look_ busy," Light seethed, pointing at L's computer; and the fact that it had its screensaver up.

"Well, I am. Catching Kira is more important than pizza, Light-kun."

"But not more important than sugar cubes, apparently," Light sniped icily; L didn't even answer him that time, and he gave another haul at the chain, hoping to drag him out of his seat. "Will you _come on_! You heard Matsuda; it'll only take twenty minutes!"

"Twenty-five," Aizawa called from the doorway.

"I said I wasn't going, Light-kun." L fixed Light with a very cold glance; Hell-frozen-over in those eyes.

"Then let _me_ go!" Light brandished his handcuffed wrist again, making the chain dance between them. "Look, just… take the handcuffs off, just for…"

He trailed off hopelessly beneath L's gaze, which had suddenly heated up phenomenally. Hell was unfreezing itself, apparently, and returning to the blazing glory of its usual soul-scorching inferno.

"Ryuzaki, how about this." Chief Yagami stepped forward, pulling back one of his own sleeves. "I'll have Light chained to _my_ wrist while we're out."

Matsuda blinked.

"Chief, your own son? Isn't that a bit— _ouch_!"

Aizawa had elbowed him sharply in the stomach, and, winded, Matsuda shut up.

"That is very good of you to offer, Yagami-san," L said, his tone bored and blasé, "but I cannot allow that."

"Why not?" Light seethed. "Just because he's my dad? I know it's a bit weird, but it's not exactly normal to be chained to _you_ either!"

"I know that. That is not my problem, as such. It's just that…" L looked from Light to his father and then back again. "…You are correct. He _is_ your father, and, as such, I think even _he_ must admit… that he does not suspect you."

"So, whatare you saying?" Light blazed. "I can only be chained to someone who thinks I'm capable of being a mass murderer?"

"Well, that's not how I would have put it, but…"

"No, I suppose Ryuzaki is right." Chief Yagami sighed, rolling his sleeve down again. "If I do not suspect you, Light, I won't be watching you for things that could suggest that you are Kira."

"Oh!" Matsuda suddenly raised his hand, waving it around. "I agree that some of Ryuzaki's reasons for suspecting Light make sense, though. How about Light is chained to _me_? I'll watch him like a _hawk_, Ryuzaki, I promise."

"How about that?" Light agreed, not keen to be chained to the overly-excitable Matsuda, but eager for a way out.

"Definitely not," L replied coldly. He averted his gaze to his screensaver. "Light-kun is staying here with me. That is final."

Light gave a frustrated sigh, flopping back into his seat; Chief Yagami gave a shake of his head, and Matsuda and Aizawa exchanged a puzzled glance.

"Alright, we were going to bring it back anyway," Matsuda said finally. "We'll just have to choose for you. Is that okay, Light?"

Light gave a dejected wave of his hand.

"Okay, we'll be back in twenty minutes!" Matsuda called back as the four of them left the room.

"Twenty-_five_, Matsuda," Aizawa corrected in exasperation as the door closed.

Thick silence reigned between Light and L, during which L picked up a pen in his usual delicate manner and took a piece of paper, starting to draw a series of boxes on it.

"Well," Light said finally, addressing the room more so than L, "I hope you're happy."

"Why would I be happy at denying you your wish to go outside?"

"Then why did you _do_ it?" Light asked incredulously, sitting up straight.

"Because I didn't want to go." L began to draw arrows between his boxes, joining them all up in different combinations. "I'm busy, as I said." He paused, feigning thoughtfulness. "And you know I hate shoes."

"_Ugh_." Light gave a disgusted groan, dragging his hand down his face. "You're so selfish…"

"Perhaps, but…" L chewed at his pen. "The sooner I catch Kira, the sooner these handcuffs will come off. That will benefit us both. And, if you are _not_ Kira, Light-kun, then you will be free to go and get pizza whenever you like."

"That doesn't change the fact," Light said testily, "that you wouldn't let me go today simply because you didn't want to put shoes on."

"I'm working too."

"Drawing a bunch of stupid boxes isn't what I would call "working"," Light griped; he was hungry, it felt like his stomach was eating itself, and the fact that L had denied him the facility to go out with the rest of the investigation team to get some lunch only made him feel hungrier. And _because_ he was hungry, his mood wasn't the best; and since that was L's _fault_, it was easy to be pissed off at the detective.

"I'm just illustrating a theory of mine," L replied absently, hunching over his sheet and beginning to scribble in the boxes. "Light-kun, please refrain from complaining. I'm trying to concentrate."

Light rocked in his seat irritably, not in the mood to work now. He tapped the arm of his chair; and after a while, noticed that the chain was jingling a little. He followed the length of it across the gap between his and L's seats and found that L was absently wrapping a few of the links around his fingers, using his non-writing hand and the movement of his wrist.

As though he was reassuring himself that it was still there.

Light blinked; could it be…? L's response to the notion of Light being chained to Matsuda had been an immediate "No", as though premeditated, almost. And despite the fact that Matsuda would have been so busy going on and on about how amazing the pizza was he probably _wouldn't_ have watched Light like a hawk – which obviously L must have known, since it _was_ Matsuda, after all – given Matsuda's actual professional standing as a detective in the Japanese police force, there was actually no real reason to deny him custody of a suspect. He was obviously capable enough of doing so, given his earned rank – even if it _was_ only when he didn't have pizza on the brain.

So… could it be that L's refusal ran deeper than Matsuda's limited capabilities? Could it be that L just didn't want him chained to anyone else? Could it simply be that L was…

…_jealous_?

Light brushed a stray piece of mahogany hair back irritably. L couldn't seriously think he _wanted_ to be chained to Matsuda…?! Well, better Matsuda than his own father, but…

Not… not that he wanted to be chained to _L_ either, for godssakes… He didn't want to be chained to _anyone_. Light looked in severe distaste at the silver band encircled around his wrist, locked up tight. A symbol of the freedom L had taken from him.

And yet, despite the fact that it was _L_ who taken his freedom, he would still rather be chained to _him_ than Matsuda. Matsuda was a nice guy, and very fond of Light, but…

No, he'd still rather stick to the eccentric, suspicious, cruel, insomniac detective. Matsuda would probably insist they wore matching pajamas and tell ghost stories at night; at least L sat down at the bedside with his laptop and let him get on with it…

"Ryuzaki?"

"Yes, Light-kun?"

"If Aizawa had offered to have me chained to him, or Mogi…?" Light leaned across nearer to L. "…Would you have let me go then?"

"No." Again, the answer was immediate, and the tone a little sharp.

Light leaned back again, feeling slightly satisfied. That settled it, then. Aizawa or Mogi would have watched him more closely than Matsuda, and didn't have the bias that Light's father had; it was just that L didn't want him chained to anyone else.

Possessive little bastard, it seemed.

"Why?" Light asked airily, glancing up at the ceiling. Though he knew, of course.

"Because they don't have the same level of suspicion of you as I do." L reached across for a sugar cube, putting down his pen. "It would defeat the object of your imprisonment completely."

Light blinked at L's choice of vocabulary; "_imprisonment_"? Had he actually referred to it as imprisonment?

"Is that what you call this?" Light asked him quietly, jingling the chain. "Imprisonment? Am I your _prisoner_, Ryuzaki?"

_What's this now, Beauty and the goddamn Beast?!_

"Well…" L glanced upwards, as though consulting the ceiling. "Perhaps that choice of lexis was a little _harsh_, but… I suppose, when you consider that you have no choice but to do only as I allow you to do, you are, in effect, my prisoner, Light-kun."

Yes. And L was the fucking _beast_ here, no doubt about that. Forget the big dark eyes and porcelain-pale skin and (when it pleased him) innocent expression; beneath it all, this creature was ugly as sin, so secure in his own sweet freedom that to take someone else's mattered nothing at all.

"And is that all you _want_?" Light snapped. "You think I'm Kira, so you're trying to tell me that you _want_ Kira chained to you?!"

"Oh, no. This, Light-kun, is more to _eliminate_ my suspicion of you. It's merely unfortunate that it hasn't worked yet to the extent that I would feel comfortable in releasing you."

"Uh huh," Light said icily. "That seems quite convenient to me, Ryuzaki."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"Well, maybe Eraldo Coil, or Deneuve, or Ryuga, or one of your _other_ super-smart alter-egos can, then!" Light snapped, standing up. "It should be _obvious_ to you by now that I'm not Kira! It's just that you don't want to believe it, because then you'll be out of a suspect and back to Square One, and moreover, it would make you look completely stupid in front of everyone if you're proven wrong after going to these lengths."

"Well, that _is_ true, but that doesn't mean that I don't actually suspect you, Light-kun."

"Well, I don't think that's the _whole_ of it, though!" Light seethed, planting his hands on the arms of L's chair and leaning in towards him. "I'm sorry if this is disrespectful to say to the almighty L, but I think a part of you actually gets off on this whole chained-together thing. I think, Ryuzaki, that you actually _like_ the fact that I'm your prisoner; I think you _like_ having this amount of control over me, being the one to say what I can do and where I can go and _when_ I can do those things. I think, Ryuzaki, that you might even have concluded, to yourself, that I _am_ innocent, but you just don't want to let me go. You _like_ having me as your _prisoner_, don't you? _Don't you, L?_"

"Light-kun, that's not true." L had actually shrunk back as far as he could against the back of his chair, away from Light and the fact that the teenager was severely invading his personal space. "The present situation is extremely awkward and compromising for us both. If I was one hundred percent certain that you are not Kira, of course I would release you."

"I don't believe you."

"Don't, then. But it's the truth."

"Why should I believe _anything_ you say?" Light demanded, exasperated. "Your entire existence is built on alter-egos – Ryuga, Ryuzaki, _L_… for god's sake, I don't even know what the hell your real name _is_!"

"And why would you wish to know my real name?" L asked him softly, leaning forward a little.

Light grabbed the front of L's white top, twisting it in his grip.

"I know what you want me to say," he hissed. "You want me to say it's because I'm Kira, and I want your name so I can kill you. But that's not it, _Ryuga_." He said the fake name, deliberately borrowed from that insufferable pop star, with venom. "It's because you're a lie. I can't believe you, I can't believe _anything_ you say… Maybe _you're_ Kira. I don't know that. Nobody knows that."

L raised his dark eyebrows at the lurid accusation.

"_I'm_ Kira? You think I'm using you as a scapegoat then, Light-kun?"

"Then what _am_ I to you?" Light snapped. "Your little _toy_? If you can't have Kira, am I the next best thing? Am I what you think Kira is? Or am I what… you _want_ Kira to be?"

L gave a snort.

"You're suggesting that I might perhaps love Kira, and so manifest my desire onto _you_?"

"I don't know _what_ I think!" Light burst out. "All I know, Ryuzaki… all I know is that this chain was your idea, and I don't know if… if you're _ever_ going to let me go."

"Prove yourself innocent, and I will, you have my word." L rested one of his bare feet against Light's abdomen, attempting to push him away. "Now go away, Light-kun. You're making me uncomfortable, and I'm trying to work."

"So what you're saying is that… for now, my freedom is yours to keep?"

"Until I'm sure that you're not Kira, yes." L kicked at him. "Go _away_."

"How can I go away?" Light snapped. "I'm _handcuffed_ to you!"

"Go back to your seat," L ordered irritably; starting to pry at the hand Light had twisted in the fabric of his top. "I have work to do."

Light _hated_ him at that moment. But it was more than just hatred; it was a seething black desire to drag him down, throw him on the ground, and grind him into the dust. God, he was so _arrogant_…

And through his boiling anger – and perhaps his hunger, too – Light could see only one way to get back at him, to gain control over him, to _imprison_ him.

Take his _freedom_; just as he had taken his.

"Light-kun!" L snapped, pushing at him now.

"No, Ryuzaki." A sudden calmness fused resolutely to his voice, Light let go of L's top and instead, with sharp speed and precision, grabbed his elbows, gripping them tightly. "I'm sick of you walking all over me."

He hauled L forwards before he could resist and claimed his mouth; the kiss was hot and hard and _angry_, and Light moved his hands to around L's back, jamming his arms to his sides so that he couldn't push him away.

As before, at first the detective didn't even react, completely rigid in what could only be described as a state of extreme shock. But then he started to retaliate, unable to lash out at Light due to the fact that he was restricted from doing so; but he instead started to squirm in Light's grip, and, being small and bony, was almost loose by the time Light breathlessly broke the kiss.

"Light-kun…!" L panted, gasping from both the kiss and his own fury. "Do that… again and I'll—"

Light cut him off by pressing his mouth to his again; his hands moving once more, taking his shoulders and pushing him down against the chair, forcing him to slide down until he was half off it. L's freed arms immediately flailed upwards, trying to shove Light away – but Light was hauling himself up onto the chair now too, planting one knee between L's legs, and using his weight to stop his struggles.

Which, ultimately, proved to be a _terrible_ idea when the whole chair overbalanced and toppled backwards, hitting the floor with a jarring _crash _that clattered right through them both; Light landed sprawled on top of L and the latter banged his head on the floor, Light's lips locked to his all the while.

The back of his head searing with splitting pain, L tried to pull away from beneath the teenager, though Light clung grim death to him, making his shoulders where he gripped him ache. It was only when L somehow managed to get his leg up underneath Light and sink his knee hard into his abdomen that the boy let him go, rolling aside with a stifled half-groan. L sat up, rubbing the back of his skull where it had met the floor, and got to his knees in a bid to get up.

Light's hand lashed out, grasping his wrist and pulling him backwards, almost to the floor again; L righted himself and twisted to face him, his eyes blazing.

"Attempt at sexual dominance," he hissed dangerously. "_Very_ high percentage, Light-kun."

"Shut the fuck up, Ryuzaki." Light grasped the back of L's head, making him give a little gasp of pain as he gave a hard twist at the ebony hair over the rising bump there, and hauled him in for a third kiss; his free arm went around L's waist, crushing the slender detective to his own form as hard as he could.

With his head held still, L could do nothing but suffer the intrusion; and slowly, by the ministrations of Light's swift, skilled tongue, felt himself dragged into the act of it, to the extent that he gave a sudden push forwards, leaning into the warm curling motion of the kiss. He didn't notice Light slip the chain behind his neck; and so, when Light eventually pulled away from him, was surprised at the sudden coolness that made the crisp hair at the nape of his neck stand on end.

"You're _my_ prisoner now," Light whispered, giving a sudden tug on the loop of chain that was in his hand and pulling L's face close to his own again; his dark eyes were wide, unreadable. Maybe there was surprise, maybe there was fear, maybe there was anger – Light couldn't tell.

A fourth kiss in mind, Light pulled L closer still, noting with satisfaction that he seemed to have stopped his struggles; yes, for _L_ to submit to him, that was good… He thought nothing of the way L's hands went to his shoulders, palms against the curves of them—

Until the detective suddenly shoved him backwards with all of his strength, pitching him onto his back. The fall wasn't enough to use up the entire six feet of the chain's length, and so L wasn't pulled down with him; instead he knelt, breathless, and started to rifle in one of his pockets.

Key; he needed the key, he didn't _want_ to unlock himself from Light, but if this was how the boy was going behave, maybe, until he calmed down, he should—

Light grasped the chain just as L pulled the key from his jeans pocket, hauling on it and bringing L down on top of him with a startled little cry; and before he could recover himself, Light snatched the key from his fingers and threw it across the room, where it landed somewhere with a lost little _clink_.

"_Light-kun!_" L's voice was a strangled mixture of fury, shock and horror. "What do you think—?!"

"_No_!" Light interrupted furiously, leaning upwards right into the detective. "I'm _sick_ of you! I'm sick of you controlling me, I'm sick of you accusing me, I'm… I'm _sick_ of being your _prisoner_! You're so arrogant; you drive me _mental_, Ryuzaki…! But I… I'm going to show you, I'll make you…" He grabbed L's top again, bringing him right down on top of him, where their eyes met; Light's hazed with anger and frustration and a strange twisted lust – L's wide, cautious, and showing Light the picture of himself that he hated. "Do you _see_, Ryuzaki? You've taken my freedom, so I'll take yours. It's only fair…"

"You will take _nothing_ from me," L hissed, grasping Light's auburn hair. "But for you to wish to, for you to _desire_ dominance over L… seems Kira-like to me, Light-kun."

"No." Light pressed one knee up between L's legs, though he got no reaction save for a very slight further widening of L's black eyes. "It's _human_, Ryuzaki. Not that _you'd_ know anything about that…"

L said nothing in reply, only taking Light's wrist and twisting it painfully, making him release the fabric of his top. Light hissed and drew it back as L very slowly got off him, contempt visible in his gaze now.

"This game is over, Light-kun," he said frostily. "Please get up. We'll not speak of this again if you do so quickly."

Light stared up at him, his anger reaching lower, colder levels still; at the way the supercilious bastard merely _dismissed _Light's impending dominance of him. Did he _really_ think that Light was just going to…? No, he wasn't Kira, he knew he wasn't all those things that L accused him of being, hadn't done all those things that L accused him of doing; but to _Hell_ with the bastard if he thought he could stomp all over _Light Yagami_ and get away with it. So he was the world's three top-rated detectives – so there had never been a case before this that he hadn't solved; Light didn't _give_ a fuck. They had had identical scores on those entrance exams, Light had _beaten_ him at tennis… They were _equal_. L wasn't _better_ than him, he had no basis on which to make that claim, and so Light _couldn't stand_ him acting as though he _was_. And if the only way to make L _see_ that was to lower himself to this, and take the thing that he used as a shield – if the only way to _show_ him that was to fuck him and make him love it, _force_ him to feel indebted to him, then…

…so be it.

Besides, the thought of L begging him for something – and he _would_ make him beg, he had decided – actually made his crotch burn a little…

"You know, Ryuzaki," he said softly, looking aside to the floor, "at first… I was just interested. I wondered what your reaction would be. If you'd submit or retaliate. That first kiss wasn't just out of spite – it was also out of curiosity. You didn't react; and now… you _fight_ me." He looked up at the detective, his brown eyes piercing and cold. "I think… you're _afraid_."

"That isn't for you to decide," L said emotionlessly; he reached down, offering Light his hand to help him up. "None of this is, Light-kun."

Light wondered just how stupid L was capable of being when he reached up and took his hand – and, of course, pulled him down, where he landed on his knees.

"I'm sorry, Ryuzaki, but…" Light gave a soft sigh, taking L's wrist tightly in his grip; and his reply answered any of a thousand questions. "…_You're wrong_."

He pushed L down; he pushed him down as hard as he could, and when he was on the floor, he pinned him there on his back and gazed down at him. And _on_ gazing down at him, for perhaps the first time, he was able to see past the hideous reflection of himself in L's mirror-mirror eyes, and _see_…

Whoever he was beneath L and Ryuga Hideki and Ryuzaki and Eraldo Coil and Deneuve; there _was_ something valid there beneath the icy wicked shell. Anger, certainly; and fear, and…

The beauty of the beast.

"It's okay," Light said quietly, brushing a little of L's ebony hair from those eyes. "If you don't struggle, I won't hurt you. I mean… it won't hurt as much, you know, if you…"

L blinked up at him silently; his body utterly motionless but his mind racing. If he struggled, he might be able to get Light off him, as he had before – he was stronger than he looked, as a rule, and Light wasn't prepared. That said, even if he _did_ manage to get Light off, he couldn't get away from him, since the boy had thrown the key across the room; and in retrospect, he had gotten Light off him before, and yet here he was, back underneath him. Yes, L was strong, but Light was more robustly-built and, despite being younger than him, was heavier. And, most importantly, Light was at a crazed level of determination, tireless in his pursuit, the amount of times L had thrown him off already not fazing him at all.

So L lay back and considered Light's earlier words; he had said he'd kissed him out of curiosity as well as spite, to see how he'd react. Was this a _game_ to the Yagami boy? A dare game – who would go further? L had confessed to an attraction – Light had kissed him. Now Light seemed to be taking the game further, to breaking point, and if L backed down and refused to play, did that mean…

…that he _lost_?

He didn't want this; it was all doubled up and over, skewed and twisted into a confusing helical mess; thought and re-thought and thought over again, as was typical of the pair of them. Light had spoken of freedom, because L had handed him that weapon earlier, by admitting his virginity, by admitting that it was what left him free, and now Light felt that all he could do was take that away… But if it was a game, and those were the rules…

Did he have to give up his freedom in order to win?

Which seemed an ironic conclusion to come to, since sometimes that was what L believed Light Yagami was up to as well; sure, confine him, chain him to the world's best detective, he'd prove he was innocent, and then after that…

Fine. He'd play. He didn't _want_ to play, but he would. This brat expected him to beg and plead, struggle and kick, and he wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.

…Should L allow Kira to do this to him?

It hardly mattered; Light was on top of him now, and maybe he was Kira, maybe he wasn't, but his kisses were poison either way.

"_Mmm, good_," Light breathed huskily in his ear. "I'm so glad you decided not to fight it, Ryuzaki. It would have just made it worse for both of us…"

L looked away from him, completely uninterested.

"I suggest you get on with it, Light-kun," he said flatly. "Whether it was twenty or twenty-five minutes…"

Light smirked down at him.

"Ever-practical, Ryuzaki. You're right, of course."

He unbuttoned and unzipped L's loose jeans and pulled them to his knees; while he seemed to accept that L had submitted to him, being Light, he probably suspected that there was intense prior interior thought process attributed to the way the detective was just lying there letting Light do whatever he wanted, but he chose to ignore it, because L wasn't going to win this round.

L had completely underestimated _this_ round.

Truly, L had handed Light a _godsend_ of a weapon against himself that morning; had he even realized how badly admitting that he was virgin, and telling Light of the philosophy he attached to that, had the potential of coming back on him?

L believed that sex was human enslavement; and yet, for all his arrogance, L _was_ human, wasn't he? Did he _really_ think he was just going to lie there smirking while Light tried and failed to use his own body to defeat him? Then again… perhaps the detective's combined ignorance and arrogance would just make this victory sweeter still.

Light was certain that he wasn't Kira, but continue to be beaten by L?

_No freaking way._

Light pulled L's shorts down to meet with his jeans; he just wanted to get the hell on with it now – fuck Ryuzaki and show him just who the hell was boss – but he was going to need to slick himself up or it wasn't going to happen. It would hurt them both more than was necessary and L would be a bitch for a week if he ripped him up too badly. Besides, Light remembered the hands-on-hips, glance-over-the-top-of-his-Oxford-library-classic attitude L had taken towards masturbation too, and saw no reason why he couldn't enjoy this; not exclusively _because_ he wanted to jerk that bastard detective off, but because he wanted to see the look on his face when he did.

"Here, don't just sprawl there," Light muttered, getting his arm under L's back and hauling him upright. "You'll be more comfortable if you sit up…"

"Of course, Light-kun."

L fixed him with those horrible black-lake eyes, and Light looked away, sliding his fingers slowly downwards, trailing over L's chest, stomach, navel, and lower still. He grasped L in his hand without any warning or subtlety, and squeezed him to bid the heat and blood forth; he smiled at the tiny noise L made, because it sounded as though he had tried to bite it back and had failed. He began to stroke him softly, feeling him harden beneath his palm, and smirked when one's of L's white hands suddenly reached for him, closing around the front of his shirt and gripping it tightly.

Oh, it was so _easy_… Mind games, tennis, and pointless banter over the toothpaste: L could hold his own, but not here, just as Light had suspected.

And obviously, L _hadn't_ suspected this.

Light pressed his mouth to the crown of L's head and spoke against his ebony hair;

"Feels good, right? _This_ is what you've denied yourself, for your own stupid reasons…"

"They aren't… _stupid_…!" L said with severe effort, trying to hold his legs still. Then: "This is… how _you_ do it… Light-kun?"

"Yeah." Light's smirk darkened. "Pervert."

"This is… _pointless_," L hissed, pressing his forehead against Light's shoulder, panting; his erection now steely and firm in the confining hand.

"Shut up." Light's movements had become hard, sharp thrusts, and he loved how L was both impassioned and overpowered by sensations he had never before felt in his life. "You just don't want to admit that you're enjoying this. Although I knew you _would_, Ryuzaki; and I think _you_ knew you would too. That's why you were afraid to do it."

"Light-kun, I want…" L gasped breathlessly, his voice catching. "I-I want you… to _stop_…"

"No, I can't stop. You're almost there now."

L raised his head; the black mirrors were glazed over, but not in his usual absent way – this was a real, _human_ emotion, unlike anything Light had ever seen in those eyes before, and… there was actual _color_ in his face, dragged up from deep within – pink dusted on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose, darkening the higher Light raised him. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out; not a gasp, or a cry, or a moan, or a demand, or an accusation, or…

"You see?" Light whispered, touching his left cheek with a knuckle and feeling the heat beneath his usually snow-white skin. "You _are_ human, Ryuzaki…"

He kissed him, tasting his quivering breathlessness; and gave one last thrust of his fingers and felt him go rigid and then overflow into his hand with a surprised gasp. He pulled his mouth away, a silver rope of saliva pulling between their lips for a moment, like the chain at their wrists, and then watched as L leaned his head back, eyes hooded as he rode out the cascading orgasm still shimmering through him. He shivered and rocked, overcome not by Light, but by his own body; the powerful sensation nothing could have prepared him for.

Overcome by the fact that he was as human as all he looked down upon; and Light smiled. He liked to see his tormentor as weak as this, brought down on his knees before him; payback for all those sleepless nights, and all those accusations and infuriating theories as to how Light _must_ be Kira, and for his _freedom_. Most especially his freedom…

L hadn't lasted long, and Light hadn't expected him to, especially since, if he was to be believed, his hand had never once wandered in that direction; though that was a good thing, since L was right – time wasn't on their side here, and the previous act had been only a means to an end.

With his dry hand, Light hurriedly unbuckled his belt and shucked his own pants and shorts to his lower thighs; L's "enslavement" had been enough to harden him, since the fusion of pleasure and bewilderment and defeat on the detective's ice-pale face was sweet elixir to Light's bruised ego. He slicked himself over, noting that L was watching his every move now, still panting a little.

It wasn't enough, though. If L was a virgin, then…

Light crawled closer to him and lifted him up under his arms to push his back against the wall, supporting him; the teen vaguely noticed the way L's bare feet flexed and squirmed, which was a screaming sign that he wasn't at all comfortable with this, but Light didn't give a damn. The apple blush was still across L's face, and it made him suddenly look _alive_, and it was more than the game now, more than defeat, more than freedom and enslavement—

Yes, it was all of those, infused together to create the poison that was spreading throughout the both of them, but… Light _wanted_ to take him now too, for himself. Perhaps not because he _loved_ him, but certainly because he loved to see him _this way._

Awakened from his glass coffin.

His fingers still wet, Light braced L's back against the wall and promptly pushed the first up inside him.

L reacted the way he had expected him to; with a sharp gasp, his eyes widening and his body seizing up, gritting his teeth.

"_Light… kun_…" he dragged out, an agonized whine present in his tone. "What are… you…?"

"I need to do this."

Light pushed down on L's left shoulder to still him as the second one joined the first; L's head snapped back and his whole body jerked in severe discomfort.

"No… st-_stop_…"

"I have to," Light said again, slightly breathless as he began to move his fingers. "It's the only way… I can…"

"No more," L groaned, "I can't… _I can't_…"

And it was sadistic, but Light loved to hear him say that; for _L_ to admit that he couldn't do something, that it was beyond him… He scissored his fingers, partly to prepare him, and partly to make him protest.

"_Light-kun!_"

Light bit his lip; because L's tone was devoid of pleasure now. It was only pain and distress that was present; but even so, Light succeeded in getting a third finger in, an action that made L actually heave with the pain.

"Out… _get out_…!" He gasped, grabbing at Light's collar and twisting it.

Light obliged, praying it had been enough; he got to his knees and pulled L into his lap, still with his back braced against the wall. L was already flinching in anticipation, his breathing shallow; and it hitched severely as Light positioned himself against his aching entrance.

"_No_," he said as the realization of what was about to happen washed over him in a slick tide of distress, suddenly forgetting all his interior vows that he wouldn't back down, that he would play this little game, that he wouldn't beg… "Light-kun, I… I _can't_… I've changed my mind…"

Light looked at him; he looked at him trembling and spread open in front of him, completely vulnerable, and he stared right into those dark eyes, and saw himself. And he was about to nod and pull away, when he remembered that this was about freedom, and if he let L go now, L had won _again_, because he had kept the thing that Light had sworn to take from him…

And besides… he had _changed his min_d? Light didn't recall ever asking him to make his mind up about it in the _first_ place…

"But I didn't _ask_ you for your permission," he reminded L coldly as his resolve solidified into a merciless impulse now.

L blinked; because he hadn't expected the boy to _refuse_…

Light had him trapped, shoved up against the wall, and he had no way of escaping; and all he could do was stare at him and offer him the mirror.

"Ninety-two percent, Light-kun," was all he could hiss, "and rising."

"Shut the fuck up, Ryuzaki."

Light thrust his hips forward and grabbed L's shoulders at the same time, pulling him down onto him. L's hands clawed at the wall as the agony of Light's invasion ripped through him, making him shake and gasp; his cry was a choked one, a deep guttural sound forced from between his clamped teeth like an animal escaping a trap, leaving parts of itself bloodily behind, and the pain, a sun-bright flare of agony, was worse than _anything_, anything he'd _ever_…

Light gave a hiss of his own; despite his preparation, it was still very uncomfortable. Of course he'd known that L was a virgin, but it was still far tighter than he had ever expected it to be, and he filled him so completely there was barely anywhere to move.

Hot, though. Who'd have known the emotionless bastard felt this good? It made Light _want_ to be inside him, but damn, if it wasn't painful…

"Light-kun…" L groaned, heaving himself forwards, "I… get out… _please, get out_…"

"No," Light panted. "I'm not… not finished…"

He started to move; but he struggled to build a rhythm. The friction was unbearable and L only hissed in pain, refusing to move with him.

It was utterly passionless; even Light had lost his enthusiasm now, overcome by the discomfort of it. It was infinitely worse than he had expected it to be, and he wasn't winning L over – only hurting him.

Yes, he had won – but the victory was as bitter as…

…_poison_…

L would owe him nothing for pain. Light cursed inwardly, pressing himself in deeper still; L groaned, but it was agonized, not pleasure-seeped.

No, this had gone wrong. _Very_ wrong. Unless L really _was_ just utterly incapable of feeling pleasure; but that hardly seemed to matter right now, since Light wasn't exactly enjoying it either. He worked his hips and, in the end, drove himself over the edge more by willpower than anything else.

Heaving a gasping sigh, he broke the bond between himself and L, letting the detective sink to the floor against the wall, his breath torn. L's body hadn't even reacted to the intercourse, and Light was inwardly furious and mortified by how bad it had been.

Apart from taking L's virginity by force, what had he proved?

He wiped himself off on his sleeve and made himself decent, brushing his auburn hair back; L hadn't even moved.

"Ryuzaki? You should…"

He trailed off as L looked up at him, and it was not because there was a look of blazing hatred on his face.

No, rather, it was because, once more, his expression was completely emotionless; as though all the pleasure and all the pain and all the color had simply been drained out, leaving him as cold and white and dead as ever.

"Are you… satisfied, Light-kun?" He asked, his voice vacant, almost soulless; as though it didn't have the capacity to groan or plead or gasp.

Which Light knew it _did_.

He couldn't answer; somehow more devastated by what had happened than L seemed to be. The detective eventually knelt up and pulled up his shorts and jeans, buttoning them with slender fingers that, despite his iced-over façade, shook a little.

"I confess," he said flatly, at great length, "it was much worse than I had expected."

Light didn't have an immediate answer for him; he wasn't sure whether to be frustrated or ashamed or angry or…

"Ryuzaki," he started finally, "I—"

But he didn't get as far as finishing; because that was exactly when Watari burst into the room.

* * *

_Sleeping Beauty; poisoned and hopeless  
You're far beyond a visible sign of your awakening.  
Failing miserably to find a way to comfort you;  
Hiding from some poisoned memory  
Poisoned and hopeless—  
Sleeping Beauty…_

- _Sleeping Beauty_; A Perfect Circle

* * *

Ohh, drama...

:P

Narroch: Yay for cliffhangers! (Oh yes! We went _there! _Please don't kill us! O.o) Who saw _that _coming eh? I knew it was but when I got this first draft from RR it still shocked me, I was freaking out, in a good way. (Granted, we DID warn you all that the rating was going up, and the summary DOES say yaoi in it.)

**RR:** Next chapter follows on immediately from this one, so you guys don't miss even a snippet of the action. But you _do_ have to wait like a week for it, so nyah ha ha…

And as _for_ next chapter… think L is going to take _that_ lying down? Of course he isn't…

Narroch: Anybody who is concerned about L, or any OOCness present in this chapter needs to firstly let us know how you feel about it in a review, and secondly, keep reading. This story goes full circle…

**RR:** And to digress, and return to _Sleeping Beauty_… two interesting things I noticed while watching it for like the four billionth time:

**ONE:** The credits, at the beginning of the movie due to its age, are rendered in a hand-written version of the VERY SAME GOTHIC FONT used for L's "L", Watari's "W", Aiber's "A", etc. Creepy coincidence, but no lie! It's a very very old style of writing, incidentally – it's even in the _Magna Carta_ or something like that. Oh, and it's on my 2007 Elvis Presley calendar. :D

**TWO:** Aurora actually only speaks for one scene. It's not something you really pay much attention to, but after she returns from the woodlands after meeting Prince Phillip, and is told by the fairies who she really is… she doesn't say a word for the rest of the movie. No kidding, she doesn't speak AT ALL. It's very odd…

Anyway, for sure you probably don't find that as interesting as what just happened in this chapter, so… click on that purple button!

Narroch: Thankyou for reading and for all the lovely reviews! You peeps are super special awesome! We really love you guys… :)

- RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx


	5. Maleficent

Welcome to our Special Halloween Installment of _Poison Apple_ – not that the chapter has anything to do with Halloween, exactly; and to be honest, the fact that the chapter being posted on Halloween is the only one named after a Disney villain is actually just a coincidence. But regardless, this is kind of the "scariest" chapter, hence its title.

(Halloween is also L's birthday, according to _How to Read 13!_)

Ah, Maleficent – best Disney villain evah, hands down. Scar, Hades, Ursula, Jafar… you got nothin' on her. I think she is the most powerful Disney villain, in fact, in light of the fact that she claims to have "all the power of Hell". No other Disney villain has ever claimed such a thing; and come on, she turns herself into a bloody _dragon_…

It _is_ nice, incidentally, to be receiving all the positive reviews from you guys stating how much you're enjoying the _Death-Note_-fused-with-Disney twist this fic has. At least it proves, if nothing else, that Squaresoft were totally onto a winning formula when they dreamed up _Kingdom Hearts _(anime + Disney fun times).

And doesn't _Poison Apple_ totally have a lot of similar elements to _Kingdom Hearts_? Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, two anime guys who are _so_ obviously into each other… :)

Another interesting fact: I found a radio station here in the UK called _Mellow Magic_. Different spelling to 'Mello', of course – but it does _sound_ the same when spoken. So it cracks me up everytime I hear the announcer say "You're listening to Mello(w) Magic…". :D

Thankyou to: **Nilahxapiel, AutumnDynasty, Ednama, Stargirl7, Nokturnal Augury, CrimsonSoulStealer, Dawn-at-Midnight, Oztan, Inu Yokai 911, Kiyoiyuki, Sister Salsa, Hittocerebattosai, Lady Psychic, Banan-nonne, Silent Dagger, Yaoihentaiqueen, Jenna, Sophabelle, Bloodshot Eyes, Phoenix-of-Hell, Rainbowness, Milk0bar, Itallia, FoxyLFoxyRaito, FireanIce **and **Death-to-the-tadpoleclowns. **

We have **80 reviews**!!111!!111! Thankyou to all of you sooooooooooo much!

Before we begin, I'd just like to say… _this_ chapter is the _real_ reason the rating went up to M.

:D

* * *

_**I hear you calling and it's needles and pins,**_

_**I want to hurt you just to hear you screaming my name;**_

_**Don't want to touch you but you're under my skin-**_

_**I want to kiss you but your lips are venomous poison;**_

_**You're poison running through my veins:**_

_**You're poison, I don't wanna break these chains...**_

- Alice Cooper, _Poison_

* * *

Maleficent

Light's encroaching fingers froze, inches from L's shoulder, just as the door banged open.

Watari – a little breathless, and not, to put it mildly, best impressed.

It dawned on Light – with the cold realism of _aurora_ – then; the security monitors. Wasn't that one of Watari's many jobs?

_He must have seen the whole goddamn thing._

Then why hadn't he come sooner, to rescue his precious genius detective; to save his poor violated princess? Not that it mattered – Light couldn't believe he'd been so fucking _stupid_ as to forget the monitors. The monitors, and the video feed, and the cameras, and the security tapes…

He felt a chilled lump of icy apprehension drop into his gut, and then fizz through his veins. It then doubled back into a wave of stomach-clenching, throat- spasming nausea that washed over him as his molten anger cooled due to the venting of his frustration, and then cracked and shattered with the guilt that came with it. His fury at L had hazed his mind over, kicking common sense to the curb, making him focus only on his own bitter justice, and forgetting everything else. But upon seeing Watari, his old eyes burning fury like two miniature suns, and his weathered face even more wrinkled than Light thought possible, his previous ill-thought out intentions flew backwards in his face and took the dominating fog with it. His mind became sharp and clear again, and that was the soul-chilling moment when he realized just what he had done…

…_he had raped L. _L had said no, Light had refused to listen to him, had taken him anyway, and now… There was no way he could excuse his behavior, or manipulate its terminology into something else. He had taken the detective by force, Watari had seen him do it, it had probably been recorded from about six different angles, and Light may have been certain that he wasn't Kira, but rape was still a criminal offence.

Kira had _judged_ rapists, for godsakes…

He couldn't even turn to face Watari; his horrified gaze settled somewhere on the wall just beyond L's head, his fists slowly clenching and shaking. What had he _done_? _Rape L_? Was he _insane_? L was a detective, working with the police – he had probably sent rapists to _prison_…

And if L had him thrown in prison for this, didn't that mean…?

_Kira_.

And the tape, his father would see the tape—

But what could he do? He'd cornered himself – for the sake of five minutes teaching that bastard of a detective a lesson, he'd actually handed _L_ the power over _him_. It had been rape, that was final, and L could destroy him now, if he so wished.

Hadn't he upped the percentage dangerously high? Maybe, even if it wasn't true, he'd concluded that Light was Kira, and if he was insistent enough—

"Yagami-kun, I can't get up," L quietly derailed his frantic train of thought. Well, if nothing else, L wasn't his friend right now, Light concluded. The immediate reverting from "Light" to "Yagami" was enough to tell him that.

And yes, the position Light was in prevented L from getting to his feet, but the teen couldn't react to it. Stillborn words rattled around in his brain, trying to find sentences; and there seemed to be no feelings in his body at all, his limbs oddly numb and distant. He only realized that Watari had crossed the room when he was bodily hauled aside by him; Light watched from the floor as Watari practically lifted L to his feet.

"Ryuzaki, are you… alright?" The elderly man paused before the last word of the question, because of course it sounded ridiculous, given what he'd just been through.

"I will be, I believe," L replied dully.

Watari stabbed a cold glance in Light's direction, twisting the knife of guilt in the boy's chest with his unforgiving eyes.

"Shall I fetch his father back?"

"No, that won't be necessary."

"Are you—?"

"Watari, I will require only one thing." L fixed the man with his usual cold, penetrating gaze. "Will you please bring me the tape?"

"The tape…?" Watari gave a little gesture around the room with his hand, as though to indicate the question of "What tape?"

"The tape. It should still be recording. I want it. Take it out and don't replace it just yet."

"Of course, Ryuzaki." Watari glanced at Light again, unmoved from his infraction. "For his father…?"

"Perhaps."

Watari gave a tightlipped nod and left the room again.

"You _are_ going to show my father that tape," Light said brokenly, still kneeling on the floor; watching L ease himself back into his chair after setting it upright again.

"I don't recall ever saying that."

Strange beast – he had returned to exactly the same behavior he had exhibited _before_ his little run-in with Light down there on the floor against the wall; it was as though, by some miracle, the role-shattering event had simply never happened. Same tone of voice, same facial expression, same infuriating, over-bearing arrogance… It was this behavior that had made Light so angry at him, and now, to redisplay it, without having learned a goddamn _thing_…

"But you _will_!" Light burst out, the emotion in his voice finally springing to life.

"Well…" L tilted his head. "…If I were to, it wouldn't be because you are undeserving, don't you agree?"

And now his gaze met with the ceiling as he continued;

"I confess, I am shocked. I never would have expected _you_ to do such a thing, Yagami-kun. And of course, you are very intelligent. You know that what you have done is very serious."

Light dipped his head.

"O-of course I do."

"Then again, perhaps I am wrong to feel confusion at your actions. It occurred to me that a desire to dominate L would be behavior displayed by Kira, which is exactly what you did. And further still, I can conclude that you did this out of anger, Yagami-kun. That is obvious. And if Kira acts solely out of anger, then your actions here today may be proof enough that you are Kira."

Light stared at him, speechless.

"Ryuzaki, are you _serious_?" He asked hollowly. "After I… what you just… _and all you can do… is ask yourself whether or not it proves if I'm Kira_?"

"I see no reason why I shouldn't use this as part of my investigation. It was a raw display of your behavior, Yagami-kun. Unless…" L's gaze slid towards him. "…You believe that your actions should have left me a shattered wreck, cowering before you? Perhaps you wished to make me fear you?"

Light had no answer for that, for it was indeed what he – at least partly – believed; how could anyone be so devoid of emotion that to be forced into the giving up their virginity to a member of the same sex who wasn't taking no for an answer was without consequence to them?

Yet L seemed to be so; and Light, against his dismayed will, felt his anger bubbling upwards again.

"Funny," he hissed, "you didn't sound this confident when I was screwing you."

"Of course not." L's tone was contempt-laced, as though he thought Light an idiot to have brought up such a thing. "I cannot deny that it was incredibly painful."

Light heaved a sigh and looked away.

"What are you going to do?" He whispered.

"I thought I would ask you that."

Light looked up sharply.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well…" L drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair thoughtfully. "I am L. I have the power to have you put in prison for this. Under my orders, it probably wouldn't even go through a court. That's the power I have, Yagami-kun. Now, whether you are Kira or not, it cannot be denied that the killings have not stopped. Suppose that you are not Kira, and you are put in prison… Yes, I've no doubt this thought has already occurred to you… Well, you might die. If you _were_ Kira, then obviously you would not die, and that would prove your guilt, but… it would be completely unethical for me to do that to ascertain your innocence. The other taskforce members would never allow it, and I can agree that they would be correct."

"Ryuzaki, Kira has nothing to do with what I—"

"Perhaps, but… conviction of rape would give me an excuse to put you in prison. But the real question, Yagami-kun, is this; do you believe that you _should_ be punished for what you did?"

Light gazed at him silently; and L leaned forward impatiently.

"It's a simple question," he hissed. "If someone steals, if someone murders, if someone _rapes_… _Should_ they be punished? What do _you_ think? That's all I want to know."

Relentless; the bastard was utterly relentless. Only L could use the fact that he had been raped and turn it around to use it as an interrogation tool. This wasn't about the rape – Light wasn't sure if L even gave a _damn_ about the rape. This was about justice, and punishment. Despite what he himself had done, of _course_ Light believed that criminals should be punished – that was what prison and the justice system was for, right?

But L was a lion prowling in the undergrowth; watching, waiting, ready to lunge on whatever he said and tear it to shreds. Even now his dark eyes followed Light's physical movement, penetrating him as well, as though he was also tracking Light's internal process. If he said yes, L would conclude that he shared the same mindset as Kira, who punished criminals. If he said no… well, L would know he was only saying it because he had worked out what L would do if he said yes, and would, on belief that Light was lying, conclude exactly the same thing.

"I think… they should," Light said finally, noticing the way L leaned right forwards as he spoke. "But Ryuzaki… _you_ think that too! That's why you're a detective, that's why you want to _catch_ Kira!"

L nodded serenely.

"Yes, Yagami-kun. Kira and I are alike in so many ways…"

Watari returned with the tape, silently handing it over to L.

"Thankyou, Watari."

"Will that be all, Ryuzaki?"

"Yes." L gave an absent little nod. "Thankyou for your concern, Watari, but… do not worry about me. I will deal with this myself. And don't replace the tape until I call you and tell you to do so."

Watari gave another wordless nod, shot a final icy glance at Light, and left once again.

"Now, let's consider," L said in a low voice, holding the tape up between two fingers, "just how much this one little tape can ruin your life, Yagami-kun."

Light gazed up at it wordlessly; almost hypnotized by the way it swung a little, suspended between the tips of L's fingers.

"This and my testimony are really the only evidence against you. Watari is possibly a witness, but that is irrelevant. The point is that, if I _were_ to press charges against you on this, this tape would be taken as evidence. Details of its contents would be recorded on all of your personal information. Presuming you didn't die by Kira's hand in prison, on your release, those details would probably make it impossible for you to be employed. And then that would be it, wouldn't it? All your dreams shattered; all those firsts and high scores would be worthless. You want to be in the police, don't you, like your father? Well, that would be impossible to achieve. You may or may not be Kira, Yagami-kun, but I have the power to destroy you even so, and _you_ were the one who gave me the weapon."

L looked away from Light, opening a desk drawer and beginning to rummage through it.

"…However," he went on, "perhaps, if you _are_ Kira, you have planned this, supposing that I would act in this way. If nothing else, a conviction would have you removed from my personal custody. The handcuffs would be taken off, and you would no longer be with me twenty-four hours a day. And a position _inside_ a prison might offer Kira a much better opportunity to continue with his killings."

"_Ryuzaki_…!" Light stared at him. "That's _insane_!"

"Of course it is," L greed blandly, "but its insanity doesn't make it impossible. Therefore…"

L snapped the top off the tape's plastic cover, hooked his finger underneath the strip of thin, dark film, and began to pull it all out. Light watched him, stunned into silence.

L tore the tape out completely when it reached the end, throwing the empty case away and grabbing the reams and reams of floaty film all up into one bundle; he removed some documents from one of the plastic rectangular boxes scattered around on the desk and replaced them with the film. Finally, he located what he had been looking for in the drawer – a cheap lighter, the case a fluorescent yellow plastic. He flicked it on and threw it into the box—

"Ryuzaki!" Light said again, finally scrambling to his feet.

He was too late, though; the film had already succumbed to the growing flame, twisting and shriveling beneath the heat, taking all the guilty evidence with it.

"You burned it…?" He asked, his voice dead as he joined L at the desk, greasy green smoke now spiraling up between them.

"I had to. The Kira case is more important. I can't have my investigation compromised; and if anyone was to know about this, it would be. I can't have you taken away."

It was the flames reflected in L's eyes now, and not Light. Though maybe they were one and the same.

Out of the corner of his eye, Light watched L's long white fingers close tightly around the chain.

No, L really hadn't learned a thing.

* * *

"Jeez, were you guys burning something in here?" Matsuda asked loudly as he followed Aizawa into the room; Mogi and Chief Yagami were behind him, all three of them carrying boxes and bags.

Only Aizawa was carrying nothing at all, and simply made for his chair to shrug off his jacket – he paused when he got there, tilting his head.

"Yeah, smells like burnt plastic or something, actually," he agreed.

"Do not dwell on it," L said dismissively from his chair; he and Light were back in their original positions, typing submissively.

Light's own fingertips twitched a little at their entrance. If only they knew what had happened in their brief absence…

Still, he supposed he should be exceedingly grateful that the observation made had been "It smells like burnt plastic" instead of "It smells like sex". He wondered if L had had that in mind, then decided that he didn't _care_ what was going through L's head right now, because he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

L had had the opportunity to obliterate him and instead had saved him, even destroying the evidence of his violation himself.

L was a sore loser- he had admitted that about himself. It wasn't in his nature to be so forgiving, even if he claimed his reasons were purely for the sake of the Kira investigation. Light suspected that L would have done this anyway, the Kira investigation aside. He should probably be grateful to him, but…

Light couldn't shake the suffocating, swarming feeling that he should instead be extremely wary of the detective. L was cruel sometimes, often sadistic, even: Light wasn't in the clear, he was on a tightrope, suspended precariously above a terrible yawning abyss, and at some point, he knew L was going to shake him off-balance.

It was the waiting game that made his skin crawl with cold pinpricks, made his eyes and mind unfocused on his work, made his fingers slick with sweat so that they slipped on the keyboard—

"Hey, Light, Ryuzaki!" Matsuda called, dumping his share of boxes onto the coffee table. "Come on, get over here."

Light waited this time for L to move; after a while of no response, the teen was resigned to the fact that L wasn't going to answer Matsuda's call and beckon, but whether it was because he was being spiteful to Light, or because he wasn't interested in pizza, or simply because it was _Matsuda's_ call and beckon, he couldn't fathom.

But then, after an eternity of seemingly considering his options, L slid out of his chair and slouched across the room, pulling Light after him. He didn't seem to be in any pain from his ordeal, and if he was, he was hiding it incredibly well.

"Matsuda-san," he said jadedly upon reaching the coffee table, where the rest of the task force were now seated, opening boxes and rustling plastic bags, "you know I do not care for pizza."

"Yeah," Matsuda agreed cheerfully, handing a box across to Light, "so that's why we got you… _this_."

Matsuda pulled out another box – thinner, smaller, made of white polystyrene, and a plastic knife and fork to go with it.

"There's one for Light too, when he's finished," Matsuda added, going back to his seat; as L opened his box to find pancakes, complete with a little plastic bottle of syrup.

He offered to Matsuda a smile more sincere than perhaps any he had ever shot in the hapless detective's direction.

"American pancakes. Thankyou, Matsuda-san."

He wandered off back in the direction of the computers again, hauling Light after him.

"Hey, where are you going?" Aizawa asked.

"I was halfway through something," L replied vaguely. "I apologize that Yagami-kun must come with me."

Aizawa shot a look at Chief Yagami, who only shrugged. It wasn't like, even for Light's sake, that they could force L to sit down here with them.

"Hey, Light, catch!" Matsuda cried, throwing the other box of pancakes in Light's direction; Light caught it deftly with a nod of thanks, and let L drag him away.

Some time later, Light decided that, although the pizza really was great, and that Matsuda had done good, he wasn't going to be able to finish it. It was too big, too thick, too greasy, and there were about twelve slices of it.

So five-and-a-bit wasn't bad at all, really.

He wiped his oil-covered fingers on a napkin, watching L out of the corner of his eye. He wasn't really doing anything at all, just staring blankly at his equally blank computer screen, chewing on his thumbnail. He'd finished his pancakes a while ago, and Light had watched him do it. He had definitely enjoyed them; maybe even enough that he would stop stomping mercilessly all over poor Matsuda.

At least for today.

Light looked down at his own pancakes. Even with the polystyrene insulating them, they would soon go cold, and he was full, and didn't like them much anyway, and—

"Hey, Ryuzaki?"

L turned his head just a little to look at him through a few strands of ebony hair.

"Yes, Yagami-kun?"

Light ignored his frosty tone and pushed his box across the desk towards him.

"Do you want my pancakes? I haven't touched them, and they're still hot."

L's eyes glinted a little behind the curtain of hair, but it was the cutting glint of ice; as though a shard of glass.

Perhaps a sliver of broken mirror.

_(What was that now, The Snow Queen? Broken mirror pieces in eyes—?)_

"No thankyou, Yagami-kun." He turned away again.

Light blinked, surprised by his refusal. L had never refused anything sweet from him before – and it was especially surprising that he would practically snatch a half-eaten apple out of Light's hand, but turn his nose up at hot, sweet pancakes that had not yet even seen the light of day. It was obvious that L had launched a tirade of cold-shouldering his handcuff-buddy, but Light had never expected any grudge of L's to ever stretch so far as to affect his incurable sweet tooth.

"Are… are you sure?" Light asked tentatively, trying to build another bridge of communication. "It's okay, I don't—"

"I said _no_."

Light felt the double meaning to the detective's words hit him squarely in the gut and immediately backed off, shaken. L hadn't even looked in his direction, and Light had to take a breath to push down the slight nausea he felt slithering around his tonsils, the delicious pizza now just concrete mix in his stomach. He turned his own gaze back to his screen, feeling thoroughly shunned.

He couldn't resist the urge, however, to let his brown eyes skim in L's general direction again when he heard the squeaky rustling of polystyrene; he was just in time to see the detective slide his thin white hand back out of Light's box, the unopened bottle of syrup suspended delicately between his fingers.

Light averted his eyes – that wasn't terribly unusual. He had seen, to his immense disgust, L drink syrup before.

L's snubbing of him had ticked him a little, though he didn't like to admit it; and though he supposed that it was not undeserved.

But then L, forever cruel in his methods, seemed to decide that _taunting_ Light would indeed be more satisfying than ignoring him.

"Matsuda-san?" He asked, his tone that sickening innocent baubly one he always laid on thick when he wanted something or was pretending to be oblivious.

There was nothing innocent about L.

"Yes, Ryuzaki?" Matsuda leapt up like a soldier called to attention, almost knocking over Mogi's tea.

L looked over his shoulder at him, the tip of his forefinger bitten between his teeth.

"Would you please be so kind as to bring me an apple?"

Matsuda blinked a little at the request, since L, believing him incompetent and a nuisance, never asked him for anything.

"O-of course, Ryuzaki…!" Oddly enthusiastic, Matsuda took up an apple from the fruit bowl in the middle of the coffee table and half-ran across the room with it; Aizawa gave a pitying little sigh into his coffee.

"Thankyou, Matsuda-san." L took the apple, though the smile this time was probably not a real one. At least, it wasn't while it lingered on Matsuda.

When he turned it on Light, it was an entirely different story.

Light met L's sickening smirk, malice dancing between his lips, with a hot defiant gaze – one that made his eyes ache and burn. He hated that smirk on L. It was an expression he set aside for times when he was able to prove through mere gesture that he was indeed superior, with a secretive glint of insight set into the smile.

Childish bastard.

"Light, can I get you anything?" Matsuda asked cheerfully, oblivious of L's little game, since he was standing behind his chair.

"Oh…" Light looked up at him. "No thanks, Matsuda."

Matsuda gave a smile and a shrug and ambled away; and Light's gaze came back to L again.

The detective leaned forwards, and, in a low voice that only Light could hear, said;

"Love apple?"

The interrogative rise at the end of it made the insinuation even more insulting, more knife-like. S_calpel-like_ really, with how specific and precise that simple cut had been; a surgical jab straight to the heart. What was he trying to do, make him _jealous_? Light's fingers curled on the desk as he watched L sink his teeth into crimson flesh.

If only… _poison_…

That was what he had done today, to Light; bitten so deep that Light had retaliated, bitten so deep that he'd hit the poison masked within.

If only that were to happen now.

Poor, fair Princess Snow White; hair of ebony, skin of snow.

Beloved sweetheart bastard.

* * *

Everything looked different at night.

And it wasn't just the visual value of a thing cast in shadows that made it different, but the entire way it sat in the darkness. The way reality seemed to bend around the curved fang of the moon, skipping over some rules at night, while impinging entirely new ones that couldn't be ratified once the sun came back up.

The great detective L had of course noticed this, because he was a nocturnal creature – it was better for him to be that way. It was quieter, _seemed_ more logical, the hours remained unbroken, and black coffee with five sugar cubes was a favorite two-thirty-in-the-morning treat.

Four to watch melt and crumble in the tar-like liquid; and one to crunch, just for the hell of it.

Night made things look different, bleached out all color, so that he was left with only the monochromatic; the most important details standing out in hardboiled contrast. It gave him an opportunity to reevaluate his medium – a report, a clue, a videotape. Sometimes he saw things at night that he had missed during the day. Sometimes he concluded things that had seemed illogical under the sun.

Sometimes he solved cases that seemed unsolvable during daylight.

Things made better sense to L at night – maybe because the air was cold, and the moon was cold, and _L_ was cold.

Maybe it was because the night chased away the _light_. No light made things easier.

No Light.

Night revealed that all things were drenched in silver; yes, gave the false impression that everything was made of marble. It drew inky shadows from things that were not even there, and it whispered secrets perhaps better left unsaid, but it also sought beauty in even the ugliest of things. It erased lines, shadowed imperfections.

The beauty of the beast revealed, indeed.

Truth was important – but sometimes night belied truth, and sometimes it was nice to believe those lies that the darkness offered. Other times, night revealed things, like those missed clues, and those final puzzle pieces.

Sometimes it did both.

L sat on the floor next to his laptop, bathed in the glow of both it and the moonlight coming in through the cracks in the blinds, and held the mirror slightly above his head, gripped between his fingertips in his usual fashion. He peered up at it curiously, his reflection all silver and shadowy, his eyes dark and intense. And it wasn't so much a search for truth or beauty as much as it was simple curiosity. Mirrors in the dark, not an interest of his.

And while it made him look different, still all he saw was L.

L – Justice, brought in to catch Kira.

So far, unsuccessful; he knew there was talk on the outside that he was incompetent, over-exaggerated in his skills, but that wasn't true. He found a suspect very quickly, honed in on him even quicker, and now the suspect was chained to his wrist with no hope of getting free unless he could _prove_ that he wasn't a suspect.

L had found Light Yagami very quickly indeed – and neither night nor day changed that. Light Yagami was the chief original Kira suspect, and so he was under 24-hour surveillance, end of story.

And if Light _was_ Kira, then truly, mirror… who was the fairest of them both?

Though that hardly seemed to matter right now. L was L and if Light was Kira, then L had allowed himself to be dominated by Kira – _L had been forcibly taken by Kira_. This wasn't justice, this was _power_, and right now, Kira or not, Light had that power. If he _was_ Kira, then that made it worse; but if he wasn't, it didn't make it better.

And if he _was_ Kira, the fact that he had had L underneath him, the fact that he had made him cry with pain, the fact that he had kissed him and touched him and taken him…

It barely mattered that it had been a rape. No, that didn't matter at all. L was the world's three top-rated detectives, and if that was so, shouldn't he be able to control one damn teenaged suspect? So it wasn't the rape itself that hurt him most – it was the fact that it had _been_ rape, the fact that Light had forced himself on him, the fact that L hadn't been able to stop him…

The fact that Light Yagami – his own prisoner – had refused to obey him.

So when he looked in the mirror now, silver-edged in the truth-revealing and truth-hiding duality darkness, he saw only L, and what L had failed to do. Why question his metaphysical beauty when that splendor wasn't the issue? Because beauty was justice, and right now, even justice didn't matter. This… this was about L and Kira, certainly, because it mattered all the more if Light _was_ Kira, but…

It was about Ryuzaki and Yagami-kun, too; and what had gone between them that day.

The poison sank deeper still; and if the mirror showed him nothing else, beauty besides, it was to seek his power back, because L _couldn't_ allow Kira to walk all over him.

Regardless of whether he truly was Kira or not.

Sex was enslavement – it seemed that L hadn't been wrong, since even _his_ own body had betrayed him beneath Light's gentle hand that afternoon.

And yet it was a weapon, too – a most devastating one and L had seen that now, first-hand. Maybe that was another reason humans valued it so much – simply to hurt one another with.

In the sunlight, he had rationalized. He had considered that despite Light's violation of him, to attack him via the law was not the right path to take, given the circumstances. He couldn't afford to have Light taken away, where he could no longer observe him. Besides, sex was enslavement, that was why, ultimately, Light had acted the way he had – and so, to become angered by it, to seek punishment for the boy because of what he had done…

…_That_ seemed rather like enslavement too. L was certain that Light didn't want to be sent to prison because of it, but the only reason he had _done_ it was to get a reaction. And if L reacted, then Light had won.

That was the daylight conclusion – that was why he had burned the tape.

But things looked different in the dark; and L _became_ different. Beauty _became_ the beast, and when he thought, when he remembered what Light had done, what _Kira_ had possibly done… The dark spawned anger and a driving thirst for vengeance.

If Yagami-kun wanted a reaction, then to Hell with it; L would _give_ him a reaction.

Sex was beautiful, and sex was painful. That was why humans treasured it so. It seemed a logical conclusion to come to now.

And it seemed logical, here in the dark, and in the reflection of himself that he saw – the wicked or the wickedly-pursued, the victim or villain; Snow White or the Wicked Queen, Aurora or Maleficent, _whichever_ of those he was – to conclude that L should take that weapon up from where Light had dropped it, and turn it on the Yagami boy and slice his throat with it.

Yes, at night, that seemed to L to be the only thing to do.

Mirror mirror; and once is once.

* * *

It was a twisted, puzzle-box anger; infused with damaged ego and the insatiable thirst to drag a confession out of Light. Though he did not voice every change, the percentage bounced up and down. L had emotions, he just chose not to act on them – but when they changed, like the melted colors of a mood ring, the percentage changed with them.

That was not to say that when L was in a good mood, the percentage went _down_, exactly; but when he was in a terrible mood, it rose. Vicious circle, because usually his terrible mood stemmed from the fact that L never seemed to get any closer to breaking Light – it wasn't as though Light was one of those strawberry creams, whereupon L could crush the chocolate shell between his finger and thumb and have everything inside ooze out over his fingers.

Light Yagami was nothing but a puzzle, that made him _interesting_, and that made him unravelable, but… it seemed to be a combination puzzle, or one reliant on clues, and L did not _possess_ all of those numbers or facts, though he knew where they were concealed – Light had them, they were somewhere in the boy's brilliant mind, somewhere L couldn't get to them, and it drove the detective to distraction.

Light was the answer.

But Light was also the question; it all went around in a loop, and until L could pull that damnable circle loose, he was stuck this way, entwined with his only friend and only worthy opponent.

_That_ was the fire of his maleficia; Light Yagami was Kira. The percentage was low now, Light had all but proven his innocence, nobody else believed he was Kira, and in many ways, L didn't _want_ to believe that he was Kira either, but…

_That_ was fact. And the fact that he knew this without having the proof he needed, coupled with what _Kira_ had done to him that day—

_That_ was what drew him to the bed at 2:37am.

Light was fast asleep, resting on his side, his chest rising and falling gently in the lull of slumber. Beautiful when he slept, perhaps; and would a kiss break his enchantment? Then again, L didn't want to break any spell – he wanted to cast it over the boy, a most wicked spell, to punish and destroy.

_(Hadn't Maleficent named her spell a gift to the princess? Deathless sleep, Aurora, most twisted gift indeed; and L could give gifts too…)_

The end of the mattress sank a little under L's weight as he stepped onto it, towering far above the sleeping Light; the sheets were soft and warm beneath his bare feet as he tread lightly across it, fairytale footsteps, until he stood right over Sleeping Beauty. As though he could sense the detective's presence, though he did not awaken, Light stirred, shifting onto his back.

The first trace of a smile graced L's bloodless lips; it was as though Light had moved under his silent will. Blackest magic, sweeter still than sugar cubes or pancakes or _apples_…

L sank to his knees onto the mattress, straddling Light's abdomen as he had before, nail in his mouth. In the cold radiance of the laptop, Light's sleeping expression flickered as L's weight settled against him through the sheets, and the detective's black magic smile darkened against his thumb.

Yes, this _was_ power, wasn't it? Maybe this was why he had denied himself this before – because it was so intoxicating, so deeply pleasure-steeped, oh yes, how high L could go on this power, on this wicked magic of euphoric brilliance, he could breathe it, and he could believe it—

And maybe yet it was because he had never had anyone over which to _exercise_ this power. L had never been interested remotely in anyone before, but Light…

Yes, brilliant Light – Aurora; pure as gold or tainted as sin, L knew which he believed, but did that _matter_ now? Light was his equal, he was the only one who ever _had_ been, and L was magnetically pulled to him because of that. No, maybe it was not love, maybe proud little Light-kun was right, maybe it was just interest, infatuation, obsession…

He suspected the boy; and yet also felt things for him that he had never felt for anyone, maybe _because_ he suspected him. Kira was equal to L, perhaps that was his ultimate basis; and now Light had committed that sin, angered L, humiliated him, forced him to thirst for revenge, for justice…

And _this_… Spellbound, it seemed, L's thin white hand left his mouth and slipped downwards, skipped over the creased fabric of his top, until his fingers brushed the denim covering his crotch. He took a little breath, Light forgotten for just a moment as his fingers slid past and his palm pressed against it. Spellbound, he _must_ be, because L never did this, never bowed to this…

But it felt good – it all felt _so good_.

_This_… this was Perfect Justice.

_(And after all, hadn't Maleficent's gift been given in justice; in revenge?)_

L leaned forwards, lifting his weight up off Light's stomach and placing his hands either side of the boy's head, so that he was on his hands and knees directly above him.

The kiss, then.

L leaned downwards, pressed his mouth to Light's, and kissed the way the spell made him; it drank Light in, and awakened him, and for a moment he lay there, his head sunk into the pillow, soft lips working at his mouth, wondering just what the hell—

After a tense moment, Light's temper caught up with his surprise and easily surpassed his disconcertment at being awoken by a kiss. The boy pulled his head away, turning it sharply aside.

"What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?" He hissed.

L smiled down at him, mirror eyes as endless and black as ever, the play of night gave his face a strange terrain, bleached and glowing unnaturally – maybe the laptop, maybe…

"Yagami-kun is uncomfortable with my actions?" L gave a little shake of his head. "Forgive me, but that seems illogical to me. It is _you_ who instigated all of the others."

"Ryuzaki," Light breathed lethally, "stop your sick jokes and get the hell off me. I don't know how the _fuck_ you can mess about like this after…"

"…This afternoon?" L only smiled. "Ah, Yagami-kun… I think perhaps I should instead _thank_ you for your actions, cruel and inappropriate as they were. You forced me to understand many things that I must confess to not having understood before…"

Light stared at him incredulously.

"Ryuzaki," he said finally, his voice devoid of _everything_, "do you feel _nothing_?"

"I do, though it is none of your concern." L gave a small sigh. "Yagami-kun, I want answers from you. Answers to many questions, and I think… that I _will_ have them from you. No matter what it takes, know that I will _crush_ them from you if I must."

"Ryuzaki, if this is about Kira _again_—"

"Shh." L pressed a long white finger to Light's lips, though it was his dangerous tone that silenced the teen more so than the finger itself. "No more. Your excuses bore me."

Light shivered beneath this creature – this inhuman, unholy beast looming over him, too white, too skinny, too strong, too lethal… L was a monster – it was easy to overlook, because his appearance belied it, but Light could see it now, revealed in all its hideous glory above him.

For Light, it had been merged lust and a crying desire to make L feel as trapped and helpless as he did; for L, this was revenge and power, perhaps lust too, but more likely malice, greed, most wicked beauty to conceal what he was beneath.

Light had sinned against him; and now L was going to make him pay.

L leaned back, resettling into his original straddling position; Light was honestly too afraid to try to get away from him. He had no idea what was going through the detective's head. Besides, there was the chain, always the chain, always his bind to the beast that imprisoned him…

"May I confess something?" L tilted his head to the side a little, and his hands reached upwards, spider-like fingers tangling in Light's auburn hair. Light's hands were free, he could push L away, but he didn't, because…

"I think I have wanted this." L wasn't gentle at all, pulling at knots caused by Light's previous sleeping state. "I believe so, anyway. There is something about you, Light Yagami – something that intrigues me and I do not think it is solely because of my suspicion of you. That is not to say that I desired in any way what you did to me today, but… I believe it was progression."

"_Progression_?" Light hissed.

"Yes." L's tone was very complacent. "It led to this. And who knows… perhaps _this_ will lead to a confession…"

"I am _not_ Kira!" Light spat. "And you're _insane_ if you think that anything you do to me will make me confess to being something I know that I'm not!"

"Ah, that sounds rather like a challenge to me, Yagami-kun…" L's fingers moved down out of Light's hair, touching his face; his thumb brushed his lip, and Light could bite him, but he didn't, because…

"You aren't struggling." It was a cool, matter-of-fact observation, as L's hands ran lower still, tracing Light's throat and collar bone; this was exploration, true interest in the way Light was put together, and it was inquisitiveness born of the very thing that made him such an excellent detective.

"Desire." L sighed it softly, feeling Light quiver beneath his icy touch. "The root of humankind, I believe. Don't you think so? You will hear people blame money or religion when it comes to the question of evil, but… aren't both of those merely disciples of desire? And it is wanting that humans cannot escape, not altogether. Perhaps I sought to protect myself from feeling indebted to others by ignoring sexual desire, but you see… _that_ was desire too, wasn't it? The desire to remain free? We are all prone to it, in one way or another, because wanting is the cause of all things. Why do I pursue Kira? Because I _want_ to catch him. If I didn't, then I wouldn't chase him. Yes, I say 'him'." L pressed his thumb a little harder against the dip in Light's collar bone, making him wince. "I'm sorry, is that terribly presumptive of me? And what _of_ Kira, then? Desire too, I think – a desire to create a world free from those considered unworthy. Those are my thoughts. We all seek something. But…"

L's thin fingers tweaked the first three buttons of Light's pajama shirt undone, earning a sharp intake of breath from the boy, but nothing else movement-wise.

"…Maybe it would be wrong of me to conclude that the reason you are not fighting me right now is desire." His cold hands slipped beneath the shirt, closing around Light's shoulders. "Maybe it is _fear_."

"I'm not afraid of you, Ryuzaki," Light gasped softly.

Which, at this moment in time, was a lie; but L only gave a soft little laugh. He rarely laughed, and Light hated the sound of it. Even when he meant it, it was cold, a little awkward, as though made to sound deliberately childish. And coming from L, that comparison seemed utterly detached and perverse. L was no child. He had childish tendencies – he liked his sweets, he wandered around barefoot, he _looked_ innocent.

But he was no child.

Though Light often forgot that L was so much older than him – their equal levels made the age gap seem irrelevant, and so Light found himself ignoring its existence. But every now and then, like right now, it would become suddenly very apparent indeed that L was older. This was no eighteen year old university friend leaning over him – this was an adult, and right now, caught up in his icy, brilliant logic, L _seemed_ like an adult. How old was he really? Twenty-three, twenty-four? It wasn't as though that automatically made him the one with the authority, but suddenly, it _seemed_ that way.

Light could confess, if only to himself, that L frightened him when he acted his age.

"Ah, Yagami-kun…" L leaned down towards him, gripping his shoulders, and pressed his mouth against Light's again, if only so he could speak against his lips; "…_I can make you afraid_."

Light shivered, paralyzed by the abrupt hardness in L's voice, now his words suddenly bared fangs, and the venom dripping off their meaning effectively squelched Light's resolve. Again, L leaned back, looking down at Light with bitter resentment of a different fountain trickling over his face, making his mirror eyes glitter with dark intentions.

"I think I can make you do anything, really," he observed after a while. "Desire is the bane of humanity – no-one is exempt from its power. And if I control your desire, I control you, do you see? That is how I perceive it, anyway."

"You're _insane_," Light hissed up at him.

"No, that's too easy, too convenient, and too wrong. I would disagree. You started this, Yagami-kun." L sharply pulled the rest of Light's buttons loose, baring his trembling chest. "I think it would be rude of me not to finish it."

"But this isn't about… _that_, is it?" Light cried. "You don't give a _damn_ about me. You don't care, I _know_ you don't. All you want is a confession, and revenge, and—"

"You see?" L smiled. "_Desire_."

"You can't justify this because of—"

"I am not obliged to justify anything to you, Yagami-kun. If this is vengeance, then it is deserved. An eye for an eye, as they say."

"That's childish."

"Of course it is." L pressed his mouth to the middle of Light's chest, making the boy's breath hitch. He began to kiss down it, but Light suddenly lifted his arm and pushed his head away.

"Don't," he hissed, turning his face away. "I know what you want. You don't have to do that…"

"You're right," L agreed airily. "That's boring, actually, isn't it? You didn't react much. Perhaps you're not very sensitive there?"

"Pervert," Light muttered blackly, biting his lip.

"That is Amane's opinion." L gave a sudden little shake of his head. "No, I can't have this… I'm willing to _break_ you, you see, Yagami-kun. This isn't enough."

Light gazed worriedly down at him as he sat there for a moment, silent. Just what the _hell_ was this guy thinking…? He wanted desperately to shove L away, strike out at him, but tonight L had become something that was truly terrifying, making it so that Light couldn't read him; and that aside, did he have the _right_ to push him away?

L was merely paying him back in kind, after all.

There was glass in the detective's eyes again as he suddenly raised his head.

"But I believe there are other ways," he said softly. His ebony-maned head dipped downwards again, his mouth coming against Light's firm, flat stomach. He licked at the hot flesh the way he licked at icing – although the salty taste wasn't as pleasant as what he was used to.

Light took a deep breath, hating that he actually rather liked the feeling of L's tongue treating him like cake. He was tempted to put his hand on the detective's head to keep him there; but was distracted from doing so as he felt, juxtaposed against the heat of L's mouth, the detective's icy fingers suddenly pawing at the waistband of his pajama pants. He sat bolt upright, again putting his hand to the side of L's face and forcing him away.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" He snapped breathlessly, ideas skittering off in all directions.

L tilted his head slightly, smiling; due to Light's sitting up, he was now straddling the younger boy's lap, and his fingers, for all Light's protests, were still hooked inside his waistband. He brought his free hand up to Light's face, claw-like fingers daintily extended the way they had been in that dream, drawn to the enchanted spindle; he touched Light's lips, the crux of his spell, bewitching him, perhaps. Light found his breath stifled and couldn't react at all when L suddenly leaned upwards and towards him, his fingers leaving his mouth, only to be replaced by his lips.

And _suddenly_ L seemed to know how to kiss. This was so many millions of miles away from his first shocked-non-responses to Light's instigations; this was brilliant, glittering, suffocating, demanding, powerful, controlling… Everything that L was right now – wicked, enchanted, driven by greed and lust and rage – was manifested in that kiss, crushing against Light, _forcing_ him to see it. _This_ was the poison that bled beneath all his eccentricities; his cute little quirks, his sweet tooth, his insomnia – the listless expression, the toneless voice, the bored demeanor. _This_ was the blazing intelligence and extreme methods that made him L.

Because this _was_ L. Not Ryuzaki. Not Ryuga.

"You thought you'd break me," L murmured wickedly on breaking the seal of their lips, leaving Light breathless. "That was why you did what you did. What do I think I'm doing? I'm _showing_ you now, Yagami-kun… that you're _mine_. Do you see that? You're my suspect, my prisoner, whatever else you want to call it – but you're mine to destroy."

Light panted desperately, part breathless and part fearful; L had slithered away again, going lower, pulling the waistband down anyway, probably now more so _because_ Light had protested—

_Why_ had he angered this wicked creature? Yes, this was Maleficent now, despite all of Light's dreams; Maleficent, driven in her quest of destruction by wrath, and when tried enough, didn't she suddenly transform into the most overwhelming evil? Perhaps L didn't quite compare to a dragon, but the principle was the same – this was the beast at its most powerful, all beauty shed. An amalgamation of all the deadliest weapons evolution had to offer, steel-corded sinew, razor sharp talons, huge billowing wings, a finely honed head with snake-like strike capabilities and an army battalion of serrated teeth to back it up with. All of its taut streamline-armored body lined with spines and spikes and the keen instincts that knew exactly where to bite, how hard, and for how long. Not to mention the ravaging fire which could spew from its fanged maw at will, flames wreathed with dark vengeful magic. Its existence an impossibility, but its presence nonetheless lurking in the back of human minds providing a primal artistic terror to nightmares.

Dragons weren't real; but L, filled with the same deadly potency as a dragon's wrath, _was. _

His fingers were _so cold_ – Light grimaced, not daring to push him away now. He was surprised that his body was actually reacting to L's touch, given how frigid and bony his hands were. Then again, the heat in his crotch felt hotter still when L suddenly closed his hand around his erection, the chill of his palm making him blaze. Light could feel the same heat in his face now, and glanced at his tormentor through hazed vision, his breath catching. L was the same as ever – colorless, though his eyes sparked with a twisted, insane delight and that was a definite smirk, no doubt.

"What… are you going to… do?" Light managed to croak out, his chest heaving.

L looked up at him, tilting his head again to convey that usual sick innocence he did not possess.

"What would you _like_ me to do, Yagami-kun?"

Light offered a small groan and said nothing more. L gave another horrible little laugh, and it jarred in Light's chest, making him feel queasy.

"Fascinating," L murmured. "I hope you don't mind me thinking so. But I see now… why you were so insistent this afternoon. You saw _me_ like this – weak, enslaved… I can see why you liked it. _This_ is power, isn't it?"

Light panted, and could only give a weak, breathless little nod; he supposed that this was just like L, really. His revenge was precise and calculated, just like everything else about him. Yes, it was a power game – and right now, Light was losing. His own victory that afternoon had all but been scratched off the wall by this, because his own had been so much clumsier.

"Power," L mused again. "I do wonder…"

He bent low, and Light shuddered as he felt the wet heat of L's mouth descend on him; stifling and suffocating and controlling and _wonderful_ and—

L snapped his head back with a little cough. Light looked up at him, his eyes burning and heavy, just in time to see him slide the little unopened bottle of syrup from the pocket of his jeans. He shoved it into Light's field of vision.

"I hope you don't mind. I suspected that I wouldn't like the taste…"

Light was sure that was actually fairly insulting, but right now, he seriously didn't give a damn; if L wanted to coat him in syrup and lick it off again, then Light was satisfied for him to do it. Who cared if it was obviously because L hated the taste of him – it was like going to someone's dinner party and bringing your own food, which was to say incredibly discourteous.

What stirred him more was that L had obviously been planning this all day, if he had taken the syrup with this in mind… which implicated that he'd been having erotic fantasies about licking syrup off Light while sitting there, completely stone-faced, in the office today.

Probably while eating that apple.

_Pervert_.

Though it gave Light a sudden chill of pleasure now – to know that he'd taken up a chunk of L's brilliant mind with this, as calculating as it had been on L's part. Light watched him now, looking down at him pouring warm sticky syrup all over him, the detective's gaze extremely intent. It felt good (though he knew L's tongue would feel better still); as did the sensation of L's cold hands pressing against the insides of his thighs. The teenager was beginning to sweat now, feeling it run off his brow and pool in the dip of his collarbone.

_This_ was L's power; or his spell, his lustful and vengeful enchantment. And who'd have known that he – so cold, so disaffected, so emotionless – could possibly _cast_ such a spell?

L gave an experimental lick at him and seemed satisfied by the overwhelming taste of syrup. Light shuddered in anticipation; part of the thrill of it was L's oral fixation. It was always cake, always sweets, always fruit – always _something_ in his damn mouth, so why not…?

Light gave a low moan, pressing his hands to the crown of L's head as he pushed as low as he could, making him stay there; it felt _so good_ – and that was ironic, given L's success at being Light's primary antagonist these days. And L probably didn't have a clue what he was doing, incidentally; hardly skilled fellatio – but the syrup did the work for him, drawing on his natural response to get it all off.

_Desire_, of course.

"_Ryuzaki_…" Light said raggedly, gripping at his ebony hair, his chest heaving, slick now with sweat. "Oh god… Ryu… Ryuzak—!"

Light felt the heat intensify and his stomach tighten in ecstasy-stunned coils; and that was when L suddenly pulled away, breaking loose from Light's grip on his skull.

"_Bastard_!" Light groaned, a frustrated hiss intermingled with it.

L leaned upwards, pushing his white face right up close to Light's flushed one.

"I have a request, Yagami-kun." He felt Light panting against his forehead and smiled.

"Wh-what…?"

"Don't call me Ryuzaki." L brushed a little of his hair back from his eyes. "Not tonight, not during this."

"Then what… the hell…?"

"L." The detective grasped either side of Light's hot face with his cold hands, pressing their foreheads together and leveling up their eyes. "I want you to call me L."

Light gave a breathless little nod, his eyes glazed over with the dynamic interplay of both pleasure and agony.

"_Yes_," L hissed, capturing Light's dry mouth for a swift kiss; there was a husky greed in his voice. "You seemed so strong today, but now, when the roles are reversed… Perhaps that is natural, but I confess, it's delicious to see you this way. Perhaps I would even consider lowering the percentage, but… as I said, desire is a thorn of humanity, and I know Kira is human. There is no reason why this behavior would therefore exempt you from being Kira. I might consider that Kira would not allow L to do this, but you really have no choice. I control you now."

_(Like that same blind guidance; the green pinprick dancing before you, leading you on, forcing you to seek your own destruction… Death awaits on my command; Touch the spindle, touch it, I say…)_

"I have… to know something," Light gasped; and blindly, his sweaty hand moved down, searching—

His palm pressed against the denim at L's crotch, feeling that he had grown hard beneath it; and despite himself, Light found himself smiling a little. Oh, even the monster…

"Are you so eager?" L questioned softly; he grasped Light's wrist and moved the hand away. "I know what you want. You want release – I left you hanging, didn't I? It must be torturous. Though I _can_ give you what you want…"

Light's entire body felt as though it was wound tighter than a spring in clockwork, and it was typically cruel of L to deny him what he needed most. Right now, all he could think was how much he would love to shove L back down there and force it into his mouth and just hold him there, no matter his struggles—

Though he didn't, and knew that L had no intention of finishing the job. In desperation, his own fingers crawled towards his agonized erection; but L's white hand snatched his wrist, his fingers tightening around it like steel clasps, stopping him in his tracks.

"No, Yagami-kun. I have other methods." His hands moved under Light's arms, and with a sudden heave of strength that his frail appearance belied, flipped him over. Light found the pillow in his face and immediately hauled himself upwards onto his hands and knees to right himself and protest—

L's splayed hand came against the back of his skull, forcing his head down again into the pillow.

"It is better this way," L reasoned monotonely, undoing his jeans with his other hand; button, zip, small pause between each. "You may scream now."

Light gasped chokingly against the pillow as the reality of the situation suddenly dawned on him; bastard had every intention of repaying Light for that afternoon, take him as he had been taken – but he was going to take Light from the back, and force his screams into a pillow.

"Ryuzaki, y-you can't…!" Light panted into the material, mortified.

"Perhaps," L purred, "but… _L_ can, and that is what I told you to call me."

"But you haven't even—!" Light cut himself off with a sharp cry of intermingled shock and pain as the detective, relentless and impetuous as ever, ignored him and plunged himself in.

So this was how it felt – Light grit his teeth and groaned excruciatingly into the pillow, and was suddenly very truly _sorry_ for what he had done to L that day. He felt L shift and bit back a scream and thought, despite the pain-hazed state of his mind, that it was not unreasonable for L to have sought revenge after suffering this…

L himself hissed, feeling the same uncomfortable stifling tightness that Light had experienced, such that it threw black vertigo blotches across his vision for a moment or two. He bit his lip, pushed further forwards, and wondered, almost suffocated by Light, what the hell humans made all the fuss about…

Still, it was power too; dominance, fed by the fact that Light was quivering and gasping into the pillow, and wasn't that exactly what L _wanted_? Make Kira crawl; and give Light a taste of his own medicine. Despite his own discomfort, this was exactly to plan.

So it was that rather than any true pleasure which sent the order down L's spine and into his hips, making him jerk them forward further still; Light gave a choking hiss and, on pulling back a little, L noticed that the movement seemed much slicker, and he knew then that he'd torn Light and made him bleed.

Maybe it was the blood that fueled him then; it was easier to build a rhythm and the fact that he knew that he had made Light bleed was morbidly enchanting. Light bit the pillow between his teeth as he felt the detective crush up against him time and time again, trying not to make a sound; although he _did_ scream, sometimes. He couldn't hold them back in the face of the pain L was instilling in his body. He was on his elbows and knees, the friction of the mattress burning a little – the detective still had one hand pressed against the back of Light's head to hold him down, spider-like fingers tangling in his sweaty auburn hair, while the other was pressed against the boy's heaving stomach, slipping a little against the slickness of it.

That was all there was between them; there was nothing easy about this union, on all levels – physical or psychological. It was painful and unwritten, fed more by the lust for dominance than anything else, and poisoned by vengeance. Perhaps, beneath it all, this was inevitable; perhaps a form of communication between two so alike, brought together by nothing but a warring of similarly brilliant minds. If they could only be drawn to each other because of that, and to nobody else, perhaps the foundations on which this bloody battle was built were of a far more benign nature – maybe _real_ attraction, maybe _real_ love, untainted by poison.

But for now, only the poison seemed apparent. It was the same as before – uncomfortable for both the giver and the receiver. Light clutched the sheets in his shaking fists, his knuckles as white as L's skin; and was, through blistering stars, disgusted that he had as good as let L do this to him. The bastard was treating him like a whore – at least Light had been good enough to push L up against the wall to support his back and make it easier on him.

He had almost _stopped_, he remembered. L's mirrored eyes had pleaded, and Light had hesitated, and _almost_ let him go.

But he _hadn't_, ultimately – and _this_ was the punishment for it. Well, for that, and for being Kira, of course. Yes, no doubt…

Not that that changed anything, least of all this situation: Light Yagami – tennis champion, nation-wide top student, freshman representative of Tokyo University, handsome, popular, brilliant – was on his knees, his screams stifled into a pillow, getting it in the ass from a cake-murdering brat with the label of "World's Best Detective" attached to him, although that attachment was not as apparent as that stupid, _stupid_ chain.

L held a mean grudge, apparently; especially against his imprisoned dear Princess Aurora.

"Would you… like release now… Yagami-kun?" L asked him breathlessly, pausing for a moment.

Light gave an aching nod into the pillow; yes, release, sweet release, and then…

…then it would be over.

He uttered another stifled little sound as he felt L's cold hand slide down his belly and onto the erection that was still there, neglected. He shivered – why were L's hands so_ cold_…? Even during _this_…

Still, icy as his fingers were, Light inadvertently thrust his hips forward even so when they closed around him, squeezing almost painfully, the sudden attention making all the need pool down there again.

"Yes, I apologize… I have… ignored you," L said, his tone blasé; Light was astounded by the fact that, aside from the breathlessness, L _still_ sounded exactly the same as he always did. There just seemed to be no interest present whatsoever.

Was it a sign of strength – a sign of heartlessness and inhumanity?

_(Because Maleficent was so very strong; all the power of Hell itself at her fingertips, if she chose to summon them – Aurora could do nothing but fall to those powers…)_

The few quick, hard thrusts that L gave him were enough; Light spilled himself over the detective's cold white fingers with a small cry, asphyxiated into the thick pillow.

That cry as enchanting as any alluring green pinprick, suspended over the impending, prophesized death contained in a single needle, L arose and followed him; his spiny fingers digging hard into the back of Light's skull, making him wince.

Though he felt himself suddenly filled as well, and matched a hiss with L's; felt the pressure drop, and felt L loosen his grip on him. L was still inside him though, panting hard, and came down with him when Light slid his knees down and lay flat on his stomach, gasping, sweat beading on his brow. L lay on top of him, his cheek against the back of Light's skull as the latter buried his face in the pillow for a moment or two; both of them silent but for their heavy breathing.

Light pushed up on his elbows and managed, still underneath L, and still with the detective invading him, to turn over; L, still on top, looked down at him with new interest, his eyes glimmering. In the glow of the laptop, he could see the slick sheen of sweat on Light's face, see how he gasped for breath still, see his hair in unusual, sweaty disarray—

This was a wonderful, battered, exhausted, lovely Light; a new one, not the proud, intelligent, argumentative young man, but instead a bewitched, _enslaved_ prisoner – and this was all _his_ work, his most wicked spell…

"Get off now," Light groaned, pushing at him.

"No," L replied languidly.

Just as Light's eyes hardened, L grasped a handful of his hair at either side of his temples and kissed him stiflingly, the act oppressive and smothering; it pulsed with a wicked black magic once more, ignited now by the evidence he had before him. He did so love new information, and all this old data was so very boring – but now Light, perhaps the only interesting thing L had to toy with at this time, given the endless dizzying circles the Kira investigation seemed to be going in at present, had offered him something bright and fresh.

_Enslaved_. He was enslaved – and L had spoken before, he had said that if he controlled Light's desire, then he could control _him_, and if he could control _him_, then perhaps…

And yes, he _was_ enslaved; he kissed back deeply, leaning upwards into it, bringing up his own shaking hands to tangle in the depth's of L's ebony hair – Snow White or the Queen, Aurora or Maleficent; all the roles were mixed up, entangled and melted with mirrors and apples and spinning wheels…

_You'll be mine, then. Light Yagami, or Kira, or…_

The excitement was real this time, kindled by reason; break Light, yes, he'd break him in two, if that was what it took—

Light's brown eyes snapped open, widening – and his mouth went slack against the kiss as he felt L, still inside him, hardening again, filling him, stretching and stirring blood—

"_Jesus_—!" Light cursed, his voice choked. "_Get out!_"

"No," L hissed again, his dark eyes blazing with a sudden insane desire. "I'm not finished with you."

Light groaned raggedly, struggling to adjust to the new position and pain.

"I can't… I can't go again…" His voice was near-begging; though honestly, he didn't expect begging to get him anywhere. All the imploring in the world hadn't made L release Misa and he from their confinement, and that aside, L had pleaded today, and Light had ignored it.

"Yes, you can," L murmured; his tone was anything but blasé now, vicious instead. "I'll _make_ you. I can make you do anything I want, Yagami-kun."

He knelt back, lifting Light's ankles; and all the boy could do was gaze up at him helplessly – at this bleached-white creature, an inverted shadow; his skin and his top almost glowing in the cold laptop light coming from somewhere on the floor.

Ironic that he looked like some ethereal angel when he was anything but.

Light grit his teeth against the jarring pain of L lifting up his legs and hooking his knees over the detective's own shoulders; it seemed to force him deeper, and although the blood and L's earlier release cushioned it a little, it was still horribly painful.

He shivered again when L's hands, cold as ever before, came to his hips to hold him still; and again his fists clutched tightly at the sheets when the bastard started to thrust into him again.

It was much easier now, and L was past the discomfort, led higher and higher by his starry emerald guide; blind, deaf, cut off from everything but _this_, and his sudden overwhelming burning need for _this_, for the power and the dominance and the sight of Light squirming and shaking beneath him, enslaved by his spell—

"_Ryuzaki_…!" Light groaned, tossing his head from side to side.

"No…" L leaned forward a little down towards him. "That's wrong, isn't it, Yagami-kun?… That's not what I told you… not what I told you to call me…"

Light only hissed; and then gasped as L suddenly managed to hit _that_ spot, the one that sparked delicious magic, and god, he probably hadn't even _meant_ to do it, like L knew what the fuck he was doing here—

L smiled at his sudden reaction; and hit it again, just to see him shudder and pant. Oh yes, he had him now…

Light hardened again between them; and L smirked, kept reeling him in, leaned down to kiss him; bending the boy almost double to make his knees hit the mattress beside his head. Light panted, drugged in equal measure by indefinable pleasure and pain.

"Feel good this time?" L whispered; tone as sweet as his sugar cubes, heart as cold as his ice cream. He licked at Light's mouth, tasting his breath. "I'll give you more, I'll… give you anything you want… if you just tell me…"

He leaned down further, so that he could hiss it in Light's ear;

"…_If you're Kira_."

"No!" Light cried, startled out of the pleasurable haze. "I'm… Ryuzaki, I'm not, _I'm not!_"

"Yes, you are." L leaned back again, relieving the pressure on Light's spine. "I need the truth from you, Yagami-kun. I don't want to hear… any more lies…"

"I'm not lying!" Light wailed in distress. "Ryu— oh god, Ryuzaki, _please_…"

"So Kira begs now?" L smiled deeply. "And don't call me Ryuzaki. I know it… seems irrelevant to you, but… it's important…"

He reached down, grasping a handful of Light's fringe, making the frightened boy look at him; mirror mirror, his eyes revealed only Kira—

"You're Kira, Light Yagami, and if you… confess that tonight, in pleasure… it needs to be confessed to L. I am… doing this as L, after all."

"Ryu—!"

"No!" L tugged aggressively at the handful of Light's hair in his grip. "_L_! Say my name, Kira! _Say it!_"

"I'm _not_ Kira!" Light screeched, still ignoring the order. "You _bastard_… using _this_ to…!"

"You know it only takes one little word," L murmured blackly, disregarding him. "Confess, Yagami-kun… Just say yes, just whisper it…

"N-no… _bastard_!" Light panted, hauling his fringe free from L's grip.

"Where _is_ Kira, then?" L snapped. "You know who I am, you know I'm never wrong… I've concluded that you're Kira because you _are_ Kira – or _were_, and if that's the case, _where has Kira gone_? Vanished into _thin air_?!"

_("…She couldn't have vanished into thin air…!")_

"I can _make_ you confess," L hissed in continuation when Light only cried with pain, all the amusement gone from his voice now. "I'm L, and I've caught you, and I can _make_ you confess…!"

"You're _insane_!"

"Am I?" L went very still for a moment, listening to Light' gasping pants, his head a little to one side. Then one of his hands left Light's hip, fingers wrapping around the chain cast loosely on the sheets. "Yes, perhaps…"

"What are… you…?"

Light bit at his lip as he felt the biting coldness of the chain touch against his erection; and then, with a flick of his wrist, L looped it a few times around Light's most precious organ and _pulled_ hard on the slack part of chain he had left in his hand—

Light bolted upright as far as he could with a strangled scream, his eyes wide and wet, stinging with salt as a lance of pure raw pain skewered through him. L pulled harder still and, despite how sick with the agony of it he felt, Light flailed his arms upwards, with the intention of getting his nails into the bastard's mirror-mirror eyes and clawing them _out_—

His missed his eyes, blinded by intense suffering, but caught the detective's left cheek; though the sharp friction of his nails on that porcelain skin didn't make L loosen his grip on the chain. The detective simply slammed his palm against Light's shoulder and threw him down again, hauling harder still until Light saw blood-colored stars burst before his eyes.

"Say you're Kira," L hissed, his voice near murderous now; was he really so sick, or was it because he just couldn't handle all the feelings conjured up during sex, due to his prior ignorance of them? It hardly mattered, since he was monstrous even so, but—

"I'm not!" Light shrieked, tears running down his face now, as he spasmed uncontrollably beneath L's pinning hand. "I'm not, _I'm not!_"

"_Say it!_" L blazed.

"You _lunatic_!" Light screamed up at him. "_Get it through your head!_"

Further enraged, L nevertheless let go of the chain, instead slamming himself up against Light as though he hoped to rip him apart—

The sudden easing of the chain, which had restricted all the blood, brought it all surging forth again, and although he was still in star-imploding pain courtesy of L's sadistic little method, Light felt an unexpected orgasm come crashing through his battered body a second time – pressed up against L, it no doubt soaked him, and serve the bastard right—

L shuddered as Light tightened around him and the sudden feverish grip pulled him over the edge too; although he did not _want_ to go over the edge of that endless abyss, dragged down with Light _(the dragon, thrust through the heart by the sword, so that it was sent crashing over the edge in a torrential rush of defeat and death)_, when he felt that he should stay up here, high on power and magic, and so his cry upon release was angry rather than pleasured—

L should stand far above Kira, not be dragged down to Hell with him.

With a last angry breath, L finally pulled away, let Light's knees drop from his shoulders, and collapsed on top of the brunette anyway. He had crushed Light to the ground, but he hadn't gotten a confession.

Another dead end.

Light still gasping and shaking pushed him away and he supposed, all things considered, that that wasn't unreasonable. Maybe, if nothing else, they'd learnt to understand one another a little better, but L was still L, still Ryuzaki, and Light was still Light, and maybe Kira, maybe not; and, ultimately…

Nothing had changed.

* * *

_**Your cruel device,**_

_**Your blood, like ice;**_

_**One look could kill-**_

_**My pain, your thrill...**_

* * *

Whoa, that was intense, non? Scary enough for Halloween? O.o

Incidentally, to all who felt sorry for poor lil' uke L last chapter… betcha don't feel sorry for him _now_. Bastard, isn't he? Personally I actually prefer him as seme (I mean, both ways are good, who the hell is gonna turn either combination down? LightxL/LxLight is for teh WIN!).

And yes, comparing L to Maleficent? Seems wacky at first, but you know, the more we wrote, the more it seemed to work. He _is_ like Maleficent in a lot of ways – absolutely hell-bent on dealing out her/his promised punishment to someone who has "disappeared", and resorting to extreme, cruel methods to do so. Plus they're both kind of creepy…

That's kind of how it works: For the _Snow White_ comparisons, Light is the Wicked Queen and L is Snow White; but for _Sleeping Beauty_, the roles are reversed, and Light is Aurora and L is Maleficent. Light is also sometimes, less often, compared to Belle, and L is "the beast" – and okay, yeah, originally it seemed as though _L_ was Aurora because of Light's dream, but… yeah, he's actually the wonderful Maleficent.

As you just saw.

Oh, and interestingly, as **Kazuni **pointed out in a review, there is an animation floating around by **Go-Devil-Dante **on DeviantART which is a LightxL _Sleeping Beauty_ type thing. It has NOTHING to do with this fic, I think it is actually much, much older, but it's a scary coincidence. I didn't even know it _existed_ until the other night, but it's pretty damn good! Has anyone seen it? It's seriously worth checking out!

Hey, as a last thing, has anyone else spotted "The L Font" around anywhere? We refer, of course, to that distinctive Old English gothic font (consisting of all 26 letters, not just the L). It's friggin' EVERYWHERE! Since my last mention of it, I have spotted it on someone's T-shirt, on a pencil-case, on Gwen Stefani's "LAMB" fragrance (I think that might be deliberate on her part, actually…), and **Nokturnal Augury **informed us that it's on her math sheets! It's like playing "I Spy"… :)

Oh, yeah… I lied when I said that was the last thing. This is the last thing:

I wrote a _Death Note_ "Halloween Special" one-shot, up now on my profile if you wanna check it out. It's LxLight (though not as scary-much as this chapter…) and is called _City of Cinders_. It's just this random thing set when Light is still locked up… eh…

OKAY! That is all! Thankyou reading, hope you review and tell us how fucked up we are…

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

- RobinRocks and Narroch

(Not that Narroch actually added any ANs, because she was too busy failing at life... nah, just kidding. I forced her to meet a deadline with this chapter and was cracking the whip, so... we'll let her off...)

xXx


	6. Spellbound

**RobinRocks:**Welllllllllll… Another specially-dated update for yallz! Last time it was Halloween, L's birthday – and unfortunately for poor L, he _died_ not long after his twenty-fifth birthday, on the date that is today's… 5th November. Incidentally, 5th November is actually a BIG date over here in the UK, because it is Guy Fawkes'/Bonfire Night. People set off fireworks for like a week… Ugh, I'm getting sick listening to them right now, I tell ya… Anyone in any other country, Narroch included, can count yourselves lucky – it gets _old_.

Narroch: OK! So what was everybody for Halloween? (I used it as an excuse to cosplay as Ravi from _D. Grayman_. Byah!)

**RobinRocks: **And I was Sailor Mars! Was anybody a _Death Note_ character? I was gonna be L at one point, but I ended up as a Sailor Scout, out fighting evil by the moonlight… Oh, and I know that **Nokturnal Augury** was L, too! More powah to ya! And speaking of Halloween, wow… the _reviews_! Thankyouthankyouthankyou so much! Looky looky how many we have for only five chapters! Thankyou sooooooooo much, guys!

Our eternal gratitude to the following people: **AutumnDynasty, Venus Smurf, Sugargrazed, AikiaJuniper, Inu-Yokai 911, Mask of Mirage, Sophabelle, Dawn-at-Midnight, Stargirl7, Kiyoiyuki, FireanIce, Yaoihentaiqueen, Jyrenze, Sister Salsa, Phoenix of Hell, Bloodshot Eyes, Rainbowness, Itallia, Nokturnal Augury, Morbidvoid13, Hittocerebattosai, Jenna, Oztan, Ethere, Calico Avangi, Matt the Gamer, Lady Psychic **and **Ali**. You guys RULE!!111!!11111!!

**RobinRocks: **It was interesting to note the totally mixed reactions to last chapter. Some of you expressed pity for Light, some of you formed the Official "Go-L-Go" Cheerleading Squad, and some of you went and hid bid the sofa until all the nasties went away… :) Thanks so much for letting us know, guys! We appreciate it more than anything!

Narroch: Cheers!

Spellbound

_Maleficent – that was what he had seemed to become. _

_An ungodly metamorphosis, a fusion of ferocity and retribution decompressed like a bomb in the electric darkness. _

_Although maybe it wasn't as much of a transformation as it seemed – L always appeared to be unaffected, lazily confident in his own abilities and intelligence to the extent that he seemed supercilious and indolent. And wasn't that Maleficent too – Mistress of All Evil, believing herself invincible? L was hardly placid, as such, but "composed" was a good way to describe him, certainly; and Maleficent was composed too, at least until…_

_Maybe all it had been was the illustration of the dragon beneath – maybe he'd been Maleficent all along, and only last night had the true wrath and power exceeded the crush point and spilled forth, breaking through that composed mask. To push through that forbidden thicket of deadly thorns was enough to enrage the creature – because that spiked bramble was the defense, that last barrier before the wicked transformation. L's defense had been the freedom his virginity symbolized; Light had taken it, hacked apart his wall of thorns, forced himself into and violated that sanctum. In retaliation, the creature had revealed himself, barreling out from beneath the placidity, blinded by rage and breathing fire._

_(Now you will deal with me, O Prince, and all the powers of Hell…)_

_So maybe, in the few floating moments before he was able to break through the skin of sleep, that was why Light saw in half-wakened dreams those black lacquered thorns all around him; their sharp promises of retribution suddenly clear as he also saw the forbidden fruit that they were supposed to protect. L's alabaster form had materialized beneath him, very much submissive, on his back and gazing up at Light with those big dark mirror eyes. Naked, his skin whiter than it had ever been – simply colorless, although flecked with crimson blood from the deep scratches the thorns had torn in him. _

_And only half-asleep, Light's waking psyche was present enough to murmur its distrust of the scene, still knowing what L had done to him; and so seeing him here, quivering beneath him, innocent and wanton… seemed bitter and wrong. Enticing perhaps, though. _

_Snow White now, then? Hair black as ebony, skin white as snow, and with the blood on him…_

_Light was drawn down to him, spellbound by his rare submission. This was how it should be – how it should have been today… The kiss was copper-flavored and breathless; a hint of tongue, a whisper of teeth, and L closed his eyes, keeping the mirror to himself. The dark lids stayed closed even when, with the ease granted by dreams, Light entered him – and once again, his rational waking psyche nudged at his dream laced libido, reminding him that no, it had not been this easy, not for either of them. Dreams could sensualize things, as it did now – making love amongst thorns and roses, to this pale, lovely creature that behaved exactly the way he wanted it to; moved and cried as he willed it, didn't struggle or fight or curse. Dreams did not convey pain, only… _

…_desire._

_Although, when Light looked down, he found L's eyes wide open again, staring blankly and reflectively up at him; and found that everything seemed to be darkening outwards from their voracious black hole effect, strong enough to drag even __**light**_ _into their crushing gravitation. He found he suddenly did not like the eerie tableau before him. The thorns were not just a stationary backdrop, they were now alive, writhing with malicious intent, towering up and around them both trapping them completely. The ebony of L's hair was beginning to melt and bleed, as though he was an ink drawing made wet. Yes, it __**was**__ like ink, seeping outwards, it was heavy and he could feel its resistant drag as it enclosed around everything, turning the world black with its oily undulations, until there was nothing at all – no thorns, no roses, no blood, even._

_Only L and Light, but—_

_Light withdrew as L sat up, now looming over him like the thorns had – he wasn't naked and white anymore, but shrouded in black, the tendrils of darkness dribbling a liquid cats-cradle over his flesh, with the essence of that haunting emerald glow._

_**Maleficent**__ through and through._

_The roles reversed, Light found himself backing away as this terrible transformed creature closed in on him; eyes showing nothing but Light's own horrified expression, hands outstretched as though to make for the boy's throat—_

Light let the fear of the dream jolt through him, before he rounded up his senses and broke the surface of consciousness with a dry gasp, the glow of dawn burning his eyes as they flew open. Ignoring it, he sat upright, turning wildly to find L, ready to lash out at him—

He took another deep breath, this one calmer, as he found L lying next to him, asleep.

And in fact, he didn't look anything like the evil, _murderous_ creature that had just manifested itself in Light's head. On his back, one hand up on the pillow beside his head, and other beneath the covers somewhere; his white top almost matching his skin, thick-lashed eyes closed and unmoving, and drenched in the radiance of _aurora_.

An angel. He looked like an angel. Pure white, and bathed in gold.

But that was L all over, wasn't it? That was the _point_ – beauty belied the beast within. Right now, asleep, a rarity in itself, he looked almost child-like; innocent and delicate. He didn't look as though he was _capable_ of the cruelty and insanity he had exhibited last night.

But yes, that was how L was – his disheveled, sloppy appearance spoke nothing of his brilliance, and his beauty spoke nothing of his true hideousness. But with the dream on playback in his mind, and with the memories of the night also elbowing their way into the scene, he knew that the warm, glowing L before him was only a cover for his multifaceted character.

And since he was contemplating L's mask, Light noticed that he had retained the scratch marks from last night – four thin, raised red lines on his white cheek where Light had dragged his nails down his face. He wondered what lie concerning them L would feed the task force – since the detective could never confess that he had gotten them from Light while raping him in retaliation.

The thought made his insides prickle uncomfortably as the unbelievable truth of what happened finally set in.

He supposed that they had trapped each other now. It was an equal sin they shared – it _made_ them equal. A stalemate. Each could destroy the other, but would risk being destroyed themselves. Eye for an eye, silence for silence, and once is once.

Light slowly lay back again unwilling to process anything as the abuse of his body suddenly caught up with him in an exhausting overwhelming rush – it was still early, and if L was asleep, that meant he would indefinitely get a lie-in. He was hardly keen for L to awaken anyway – he didn't know what was going to happen between them now. They had overstepped their prescribed roles as suspect and investigator, leaving Light floundering on the scary possibilities that the future guardedly held. They were even, but L had _forced_ Light to be afraid of him by exerting demented cruelty – the genius slipping to show the lunatic that lurked beneath the brilliant mind.

And yes, Light was _afraid_ of that lunatic. L was as extreme as Kira in many ways, and that was thoroughly unnerving.

Then again, this was _L_. Perhaps he would just pretend that all of this hadn't even happened. Reckless and monstrous as he was, that seemed to be exactly the kind of thing he'd do.

Treat it as data; and pretend that it didn't even matter.

* * *

Light's eyes fluttered open again some time later; and he was greeted with the sight of L's face looming over him, his dark eyes intense and curious. Light shrank back with a coughing little gasp as the last dredges of sleep were startled out of him by the detective's defective sense of personal space.

"Ryuzaki!" He hissed, wriggling back from L. "Stop doing that!"

"Stop?" L repeated, as though the word was a new bauble to him; his innocent tone sat upon the inquisitive pitch of his voice as a magpie perched upon a telephone wire. It was only the condescending tilt of his head that served to betray that he knew _exactly _what he was doing.

He leaned back a little, unfurling almost, and the sun suddenly blazed behind his head; rising in the East, he blocked it and the rays cast him a halo. An angel, maybe he _was_, although…

Yes, Justice he may have been – the one clad in robes of white and purest gold; radiant in his righteousness, though Light knew his angelica to be a lie. This was no angel above him now, gazing down at him as though he was an insect captured in a jar, waiting to be identified, labeled, crucified with a needle and then stuck on a display wall along with the detective's various other accomplishments. He knew now the cruelty this dreadful creature was capable of – just what kind of venom ran throughout his veins.

"Go away," he muttered, rolling onto his side so that he didn't have to face the detective and his false ethereal halation. "Didn't you get what you wanted? Aren't you satisfied?"

"Not wholly."

"Pity." Light clenched the sheets in his fists as a new hollow anger began to gnaw at him.

"It is," L agreed, skipping over Light's tightly-corded sarcasm. "I suppose I should confess something to you."

"Like what?" Light hissed. "That you're some kind of _sadist_?"

L tilted his head.

"It is not something I have ever considered." He consulted the ceiling, dark eyes blank while he internally processed the accusation. "Perhaps I am. It certainly seemed natural to me last night to… well, the _chain_, for example, or—"

"You sick pervert!" Light snapped, interrupting him. "You're not supposed to _admit_ to that!"

"Why would I lie? Last night, I wanted to hurt you. I felt that you deserved it, and felt that I was justified in my actions. If I hadn't felt that, then I wouldn't have done it, so what is the point of lying and saying that it brought me no pleasure?" L looked back at Light, who was steadfastly attempting to ignore him; though his cold, calm words still stubbornly floated in his skull, accompanying thoughts sticking like cold jetsam. "You felt the same way yesterday afternoon, didn't you? It brought you pleasure to see me weakened before you, for you to hold power over me. It is human nature."

"_You're not human_," Light hissed.

"Of course I am." L gave a small snort. "That's ridiculous of you to say. And as a human, it follows that I will be governed by human actions. Desire, you see. Isn't that what I said? Mine was not so lustful as it was revenge-seeking, but it was desire nonetheless."

"And is that what you wanted to _confess_?" Light snapped with an expression of skittish foreboding. He wasn't sure he wanted to know any more of L's 'confessions'.

"Not exactly. What I wanted to say was that I believe that I must drop my "Kira acts out of anger" theory. All it proves is that Kira is human, which is something I had concluded anyway. It does not thrust the blame on _you_ in any way."

Light actually looked over his shoulder at him, his brown eyes probing for the catch he knew was present _somewhere_.

"What made you decide that?"

"Well, last night, I was driven to heighten my percentage of your chance of being Kira due to the fact that your actions that afternoon were caused by anger, and it proved that you were capable of doing reckless and destructive things while enraged. However… last night, I sought revenge on you, and I admit that… my actions were _also_ born of anger. Anger and desire, do you see? And I know one hundred percent for certain that _I_ am not Kira, so the fact that those human emotions would drive you to those destructive tendencies does not enlighten us on anything to do with Kira's personality. All we can conclude is that they are merely _human_."

"That's nice," Light replied stiffly.

"I don't think I would say _that_, exactly…"

Light snorted irritably.

"Of course _you_ wouldn't…"

"I believe we are equal now, though," L went on, juggling a shoulder nonchalantly. "Even."

"Do you?"

"Yes." L met Light's hard gaze. "I have repaid you in kind for your actions. You are not just justified in retaliating further, and so I do not expect you to."

"That doesn't mean that I _won't_."

"Yes." L tilted his head. "You _are_ a rather sore loser, aren't you?"

"And you aren't?" Light snapped.

"Of course I am, hence my actions last night. But Kira is a sore loser too…"

"So I've heard."

"Or so you _know_."

"_Nobody_ likes losing, Ryuzaki," Light muttered blackly, rolling over again.

"Of course they don't, Light-kun."

Light blinked a little in surprise – L had reverted back to using his birth name instead of his family name.

"I take it we're friends again, then," he said icily in reference to it.

"I wouldn't say we ever _fell out_, exactly, Light-kun."

"You stopped using my first name."

L gave a shrug.

"I was sulking. Is that not allowed?"

"An odd way to sulk," Light growled. "The whole thing."

"It seemed fair to me. It makes us equal, although, in turn, it proves that we _are_ equal, do you see?"

Again, Light returned to lying on his back; he didn't like the way L was looming over him, dominant and indifferent once again, but that couldn't be helped.

"I'm not sure I do."

"Really?" L stared at the ceiling for a long while. "Well, it proves our equality to the extent that we were each able to dominate the other. If I had failed to conquer you last night, then we would not be equal. Is that clear to you?"

"Crystal clear," Light replied snippily.

"Interesting how Kira and L are _also_ deemed as equals."

"Yes." Light's tone was as glazed and emotionless as L's.

"You don't seem very interested, Light-kun."

"Why would I be?" Light gave a yawn. "It's the same old accusation you always try to hang me with, Ryuzaki. Don't you get tired of it?"

"Sometimes, but that doesn't deplete the percentage of your chance of being Kira."

"No, I suppose not." Light closed his eyes. "Though maybe you'd better stop trying so hard to make everyone believe I'm Kira now, Ryuzaki."

"Why would you say that?" L asked softly.

"Because if I _was_ Kira, then…" Light rubbed at his hair sleepily. "…Well. Last night, for example… L is supposed to _catch_ Kira, not screw him."

"That sounds like a confession, Light-kun."

"I know, but it isn't." Light gave him a sweet little smile. "Sorry to disappoint you."

"Though perhaps, if you _are_ Kira… that is your plan?" L questioned. "To divert me away from suspecting you, simply to protect my own title? Perhaps you had premeditated that I would react in this way?"

"I didn't _force_ you to do what you did last night!"

"But you instigated the avalanche motion; perhaps in the knowledge that I would retaliate in such a way."

Light sat up angrily.

"You complete _bastard_! Do you think I would have done it if I'd known you'd go psychotic like that on me?"

"So you acted on egotistical foundation, conducting a derogatory act punishable by law, without thought for the consequences." L cocked his head. "That sounds very like the nature of the first Kira killings to me, Light-kun." When Light furiously refused to answer, he went on: "Besides, the ignorance of the fact that I would retaliate in kind seems to me to be a sort of hopeful position, that you might dominate me, make me afraid of you. Again that seems to be a Kira-like trait."

"So you're happy with what has happened."

"Not precisely, but it has told me a lot about you, Light-kun. Both your dominance and your domination have proved interesting."

"I doubt you're going to write notes on them," Light snapped.

"I may do," L said absently.

"And _what_?! Let my _father_ see them?"

"Perhaps."

"He'd _kill_ you if he knew that you—"

Just as last night, L suddenly reached out with his fingers and silenced Light by pressing them against his lips.

"Now, Light-kun," he whispered, "let's not forget who _started_ this little game."

Light did indeed fall silent when L's fingers slipped away; watching the detective intently, who gave a shrug of his slender, sloping shoulders.

"It _is_ sort of a game though, isn't it? A game that you and I play, Light-kun, regardless of whether you are Kira or not. It's all power, really, don't you agree? All power, in a game of winning or losing. And I wish I could say that neither of us cheat, but I don't think it's true. I certainly have a few aces up my sleeve, and I am convinced that you do too. And for now, I believe that the deck has merely been reshuffled. The game goes on, but with different hands."

"I don't follow."

"_Yes you do_," L whispered, reaching up to Light's auburn hair to thrust and tangle his long fingers into it once more. "Of course you do. You are my equal, and thus you understand everything that I do."

"And do _you_ understand?"

"Of course. It's merely another transition." L gave a small rattle of the chain, as though to make a point. "The game remains the same, Light-kun – it is only the rules that have changed."

* * *

At first, Light had _believed_ that nothing had changed – that everything that had happened was merely an extension of their ego-fed power games. Neither had lost, neither had won – each had suffered a loss and gained a victory, and ultimately, that brought the scores out as equal and perfectly-matched once again.

Light had started it; and L had finished it.

And L believed that it was only the _rules_ of the game that had changed, but not the game itself.

Light wasn't so sure he agreed with him.

He was unnerved, terrified and exhilarated in equal measure by what had happened between them – by what their shed beauty had, on both parts, revealed. The very moment those handcuffs had been clicked onto their wrists on L's order, locking them together, Light would never have guessed that the uneasy glass orb floating between them would shatter and spill all of this out. There was nothing between them but a poisoned mess of rivalry and lust and hatred and perhaps even _love_…

But then, all those things weren't exactly "nothing". An enchantment, perhaps; or a curse. A spinning wheel or poisoned apple flesh. Their vengeance exacted upon each other crossed so many boundaries that the transgressions bled deep and continued to flow beneath their denial.

And perhaps _L_ would deny it; but to himself, Light couldn't. He would not thank that bastard detective for the rape – but still, there was something… _there_. Maleficent was as alluring as bewitching, clearly…

And perhaps their countered dominances of one another were but a morbid and terrible foundation to begin to brew anything more – anything _beyond_ that supremacy and thirst for vengeance – but there was no denying that it _was_ solely that dominance that cast this heady spell.

Yes, it was attraction – a terrible black magic at times, it seemed. It had always been there, benign at first perhaps, but the wounds broken and made to bleed by their actions had lifted it to the surface where it was suddenly a swaying malignant force.

It seemed crazy to want someone more _after_ they had _raped_ you; after they had tried to manipulate you in pleasure to confess to hideous acts; after they had shown to care nothing for you at all, driven only by a demented and broken sense of justice.

But that was L – beyond his eccentricities and odd little quirks. Somehow, the ugliness that lay beneath was the purest thing about him; the _real_ L was anything but beautiful, the dragon beneath Maleficent's elegant dark grace, but it was the truth of him, the real reflection in a mirror so enchanted, and _that_ was what made Light spellbound.

As for L himself – Light didn't know. He had no way of gauging L's reactions or emotions, because he rarely displayed any. The pain of Light's dominance, and the manic flushed pleasure of his own, were the only real human expressions he had ever seen on the detective – and they had only been dragged up by sexual intercourse, something he was unfamiliar with. It was a true deep end into which he had been thrown, and his masque could not remain blank while he struggled and splashed helplessly – but love…?

Yes, L threw that word about a lot, especially recently, in regards to Light and the confused sexual feelings he was experiencing towards him; but Light had never wavered in his statement of L's ignorance. How could a creature so monstrous know of love? And besides, L believed that sex, and most likely love, were enslavement – and if he could suppress and deny an aching erection, he could most certainly suppress and deny any true _emotion_ he felt towards Light. Now that his virginity had been taken from him, Light knew L would still struggle to cling to anything that constituted him as "free" – Light could not cage him with love.

L would never allow that, he was certain.

Light had never considered himself a homosexual, either – he had never been attracted to another male before, and L… Well, it was probably fair to say that L had never been attracted to _anyone_ before, _ever_, so even if he _did_ have an actual active sexuality, it was utterly irrelevant to this equation.

Although it wasn't sexuality that bid this forth – it was a force that pulled at them, an attraction that fused them, something dark and unexplainable, yet undeniably solid that drew them to one another without a word of warning, as though they were magnets. A spell that demanded that they give in and, as equals, pursue their equality in every possible way – they were as perfect and flawed as each other, and so perfect and flawed together, and that was why it didn't _matter_ that they were both male.

Such magic was regardless of gender and sexuality and other silly human traits.

Perhaps that was why Light was able to, inside himself, face up to the fact that, despite everything, he wanted L more desperately _now_ than he had ever wanted him before; simply because he couldn't explain _why_.

Such is the nature of magicians and sorcerers – magic is only magic as long as it remains a secret.

Not that it meant that Light forgave him his actions – but it _did_ change things.

Oh yes, L could be wrong. Very wrong indeed.

* * *

Once again, Light was forced, in his own mind, to realize that L was a remarkable actor – almost as good as himself. If Light hadn't been the unfortunate recipient of L's vengeful actions last night, he was quite certain that even he, with his notable observational and deductive skills, would not have been able to guess that such a monster had been unleashed from the flawless masque L usually put up. There was nothing out of the ordinary about his behavior at all – it was as though he had simply done what he always did every night; eaten cake, drank tea, typed on his laptop and woken Light up several times during the night for completely innocent reasons.

It was almost unnerving on Light's part to see how mechanically and… _normally_ L interacted with his father; really rather sickening that the detective could look Chief Soichiro Yagami in the face after raping his son twice over, amongst other unmentionable things.

Right now, it was the usual drill; the relentless, everyday humdrum of the Kira Investigation. Aizawa researched, Mogi filed, and Matsuda received an email with a link to a very loud YouTube video, the clicking on of which earned him melting glances from everybody else in the room.

Light was honestly, truly _trying_ to work; but the information before him was stale, the same old data from yesterday, and the day before, and the day before… The screen burned his eyes, made him blink too much; and honestly, L had wrecked him last night. That was partly why he was so astonished by the detective's indifferent behavior – _he'd_ put _him_ through the wringer yesterday, and yet it didn't seem to have had any detrimental effect on him at all. And last night, even though L had been the dominant one, it still wasn't easy on the body – Light himself was witness to that.

So maybe _that_ was partly why he found himself gazing at _L_ rather than his on-screen notes.

The genius detective was enthralled in his usual rapture; furthering his catalog on Kira while perched in his odd "increased deductive reasoning" position, sipping at morbidly-sweet English tea and eating cherries.

Real cherries, on stalks; not glace ones. Light had once thought them too sharp for L's sweet tongue, but apparently they weren't, since L seemed to like them. Though that was not what made Light watch him with such interest – it was that L didn't seem to have any precise, uniform way of eating them, which was highly unusual for him.

Some he took between his teeth and plucked them off the stalk; others he just put into his mouth whole, removing the stalk inside his mouth and spitting it out afterwards. Some he cleaved completely in half before placing it in his mouth, the juices bleeding a little, tinting his bottom lip dark red; once or twice he licked it clean very slowly with an enticing show of pink tongue, the sight of which made Light very slowly clench his fist under the desk, fingers indenting four crescent moons into his palm.

Though the ultimate nail in the coffin was when L took a double-cherry whole into his mouth, chewing it slowly, taking a long time to extract the stalk; or so it seemed.

It was in fact only because, as Light saw, when he eventually plucked the stalk out, he had tied it into a knot with his tongue.

Talented mouth.

It sent a shiver trickling down Light's spine; the source of which was intangible. Pleasure, perhaps? Or maybe just the memory of what that tongue had done to _him_ last night—

Light felt his forehead burn and wiped a shaking hand across it—

"Light-kun?"

He jumped, turning sharply in his seat to face L, who was sitting across from him, holding the knotted cherry stalk daintily between two fingers.

"Are you alright?" L pressed, leaning forward a little; black mirror eyes wide and curious.

"Y-yes," Light answered after a moment's hesitation. He pushed upwards out of his chair; drunk on bewitchment, perhaps with a lust for insane impulsiveness burning within his veins. "Can we go to the bathroom for a moment?"

"Of course." L flicked his cherry stalk art onto the desk and got out of his seat very slowly; Light was already up and on the move, pulling the chain almost taut by the time L had shoved his hands into his pockets and languidly ambled over to him.

"You are eager to leave," the detective observed as they crossed the floor; it was a deliberately loud observation, and made all four other members of the Kira task force look up briefly as they reached the door. Light shot him a hot, resentful glance, but L wasn't looking at him.

"You seem distracted," L went on halfway down the hall, long after the door had clicked shut behind them.

"Yeah," was all Light offered; the tension between them was thick and unbearable, a stale choking smog which coiled out between them both by way of polluted osmosis.

Everything was so raw and open that every touch was scraping and every word exchanged between them hung in the air, unable to go anywhere else since neither one was willing to be the one that opened the sticky window to resolution. Light couldn't tell if L was suffering in the same way that he was, because he couldn't tell anything about L at all, though it seemed terribly unfair if he wasn't, even if he would insist on denying it.

"Light-kun, this is because of last night?" L suddenly asked, stopping and catching at Light's shirt sleeve.

The physical contact caused the tension to solidify and snap like an elastic band stretched to its full potential; Light whirled on L, grasping his shoulders and pulling him the final few inches closer to bring their mouths together.

It took a few moments for the spell to overtake L; at first he simply stood there, eyes wide open with surprise, and utterly nonreactive. But then, as Light began to fully dominate his mouth, he too bit deep into the apple – grasping Light's shirt in his fists, pressing upwards into the kiss, as though refusing to be beaten down again, as he had been yesterday, and refusing to allow Light to get back up from the punishment he had dealt him last night.

Another game, now; this was no longer about the element of surprise, or gauging reactions – but about power, and who was most worthy of taking the crown in this competition. Maybe bloodied attraction, too, but ultimately it was _power_ that dragged them into this fray.

"Of course… it's because… of last night!" Light panted breathlessly, breaking the seal of their lips for a moment. "…_Bastard_…!"

"It enticed you?" L smirked darkly at that. "Such a… terrible act…?"

"Shut up…!" Light shoved at L, releasing him and pushing him against the wall of the corridor. Their gazes met for a brief moment, flaring hot and magnetic – Light reflected in L's endless black lake eyes.

And then L's white hand, fingers spider-like, reached out and grasped the front of Light's button-down shirt, hauling at him; the detective pulled his suspect up against him and lightning cracked between their lips as L revealed Maleficent and Light refused to be beaten as he had been last night. He stood up against the dragon, and perhaps his lips would be bruised for it, but it was all worth it.

Every _inch_ of this poison-drenched spell was utterly _worth_ it.

The chain clinked and their chests heaved as fingers entangled in clothes and hair; and skin slicked with sweat and their eyes opened and met for the briefest of moments – water-clear brown meeting darkest magic black. And then the stakes rose and their eyes shut again, the kiss strong and breathless, each trying to force the other to submit and give in.

Love and hate and rivalry and lust and vengeance and need and justice, all haphazardly brewed together; such a poisonous concoction was their kiss.

And then, as the roots spread deeper still – as Light's arms wrapped around L's waist; as L's hands pulled at Light's hair, pressing them together harder still – the door handle of the main investigation room suddenly clicked and creaked downwards.

Light and L broke apart as though each was suddenly blazing hot to the touch and burning the other, both pairs of eyes trained on the door, which was beginning to open; Aizawa's voice, calling something to Chief Yagami, muffled from beyond it.

They both spared a glance at one another – they couldn't be caught out here like this, loitering in the corridor for no apparent reason, panting and disheveled. Lead detective and chief suspect found together under suspicious circumstances…?

For all his sharp-minded genius, L really _was_ just standing there, floundering helplessly; seeing no other option, Light grabbed his wrist and _ran_, hauling L after him.

There were a few moments before L registered that Light was trying to save them, during which he stumbled along awkwardly after him; but then he gathered up most of the chain in his hand and started to run too, Light still clinging to his wrist, and they safely got around the corner and out of sight before Aizawa got fully out of the room.

Though they didn't stop there; suddenly drugged with a feeling of coltish exhilaration, possibly due to their near-detection, they kept running, side by side, perfectly together and in step – down the next corridor and the next, and another and another and another, up staircases, until—

Exhausted, with splitting stitches, they collapsed in another deserted hallway, breathless; and, despite everything, when their gazes met, they both began to laugh uncontrollably.

And suddenly there was nothing cold or awkward about L's laugh – it seemed warm and natural, on the contrary. Light had no way of saying why either of them found this all so hilarious; he had never seen L laugh like this, at _anything_. So to have him clutching at Light's shirt, his entire body wracked with uncontrollable gasps of choking laughter, was both phenomenal and very strange.

It took quite a while for them both to calm down, during which they both sprawled on the corridor floor, partially intertwined; aching laughter draining away to leave hiccoughing giggles. Light eventually managed to get to his hands and knees, dragging himself up against the wall, and offered L his hand when he finally managed to get to his feet. L reached for him, and their fingers locked, Light's a warm contrast to L's icy ones, and Light pulled him to his feet. Breathlessly, L looked up and down the corridor, his breath hitching ever now and then as though he was biting back another laughing fit – and then he pulled Light towards one of the only rooms on this floor.

Men's bathroom.

"Ironic," Light panted.

L nodded, pushing the door open.

"But this was… where you wanted to go, Light-kun?"

"No," Light confessed. "That was just… an excuse…"

L looked back at him – just as the door swung shut behind them, plunging them both into pitch darkness.

"We are on… the nineteenth floor. This bathroom… is absolutely unused," L said through the darkness, breath still catching, as though he felt he needed to explain why it was dark and smelled so strongly of new plastic and disinfectant.

"Right." Light pressed a splayed hand on the wall nearest to him, searching for the switch. He soon found it, flipping it on and causing pale yellow illumination to flood the bathroom.

Mirrors. Mirrorsmirrors_mirrors_.

Long panel mirrors lined three of the walls, the biggest above the row of sinks. Light paused uneasily as L made for the sinks, causing the chain to become taut.

"What is wrong, Light-kun?" L asked, turning to him; and Light's reflection was suddenly very stark in his eyes.

"Nothing," Light replied quickly. L looked at him for a while longer, studying him – before turning away and heading over to the sinks again. Light followed, glancing around.

"There seems to be something wrong," L said after a long moment, before bending over the sink to drink from the tap.

"Ryuzaki, that's disgusting," Light said irritably.

"And _that_ is evasion," L replied, coming up again and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "Something bothers you about this room. Don't think that I cannot see it."

Light hesitated – and then sighed.

"Okay, fine," he relented. "What's with all the mirrors? Not just in here – in all the bathrooms here. In _our_ bathroom."

"Security reasons," L replied simply.

"Like _what_, exactly?"

"They offer a greater visibility scope. It disenables people to sneak up on you."

"And just who would be sneaking up on _you_?"

L gave a surprised little blink.

"Why, Kira, of course."

"Kira doesn't know who or where you are."

L tilted his head, his gaze on Light's reflection rather than Light himself.

"Is that so?"

Light gave an angry little shake of his head.

"You're incredible. One minute you're kissing me, and then the next you're right back to accusing me of—"

"Our personal feelings don't change this situation," L interrupted coldly. "Showing me affection does not make me drop the percentage that you might be Kira."

"So all those mirrors… are just a precaution… against _me_?"

"Kira in general. After all, I am not one hundred per cent certain that _you_ are Kira."

"You think I might… what? Stab you in the back?"

"You might, perhaps."

"Why _would_ I?" Light burst out incredulously. "I'm your _friend_!"

"_Friend_," L repeated glazedly. "Yes, perhaps… Though I believe _our_ friendship to be rather more intense than what usually constitutes a relationship between friends."

"Then doesn't that make it even _less_ likely?" Light seethed, grabbing at L's shoulder.

L gazed at Light's reflection for a while, before finally turning his eyes on the real thing.

"No," he said. "It doesn't."

Light's hand slowly slid off his shoulder, but L went on;

"Don't you remember what I said to you?" He rattled the chain. "Your enemies are often the closest to your heart. It is easier to destroy someone you love than someone you don't."

Light could only gaze at him wordlessly; it was as though he was suddenly speaking another language. He knew L could speak English fluently – maybe he was speaking English?

But no, Light could hear what he was saying – but he couldn't comprehend it. He didn't understand what he _meant_. Five minutes ago he'd been all over him, as though the entire notion of Kira had been wiped from his memory, and _now_…?

Did he truly feel nothing at all; or was it the opposite? Did he feel for Light so much that he feared it would be his destruction?

"This is partly my fault," L went on, his voice softer now. "My feelings have complicated matters. What you did yesterday was a terrible thing, but in many ways, I feel that _I_ led you to do it. You are my _suspect_, we shouldn't be… none of this is… we shouldn't even be _friends_, Light-kun. I have let myself become attached to you."

"But that's normal—"

"No," L interrupted tiredly. "It _isn't_. Not for me. I have never been attached to anyone before. You are my first friend, Light-kun, my first… my first _everything_."

"You feel indebted?" Light whispered, taking L's shoulders and standing behind him; their eyes met in the reflection before them. "Just like you said?"

L was silent for a while.

"Light-kun," he said eventually, "this relationship is _very_ dangerous."

"It feels right."

"No, it doesn't." L toyed with the chain, lifting it up and letting its cold length slide over and between his fingers. "It feels wrong. That's because it _is_ wrong. We both know that."

"I don't _care_!" Light suddenly burst out; he hauled L around to face him, grasping his shoulders and pressing the small of his back up against the marble row of sinks.

"Well, that's entirely the problem, isn't it?" L said, his voice and head dipped low; he paused a moment more, then lifted his head, pressing upwards to speak against Light's mouth;

"_I don't care either_."

They breathed against each other for a long, silent moment, the tension stretched and strung once more; as though neither of them could bear to break the glass.

"_Kiss me_," Light whispered.

The arrow of a smirk tugged at L's lips.

"Kira begs?"

The glass shattered with those words – L would not mind-rape him yet again. Light grasped handfuls of the detective's ebony hair and brought their mouths crashing together, bruising L's satisfied smile away. There was nothing tender or loving about it – passion, yes, but it was a war of strength and power, as before.

They kissed like lovers – but moreover, they kissed like enemies.

Light slipped an arm under L's thighs, pushing him up onto the marble that the sinks were set into; forcing him to sit properly, his legs apart so that Light could slip in between them.

"Light-kun," L said breathlessly against Light's neck, breaking the kiss for a moment, "I can't… sit like this…"

"Or your deductive… reasoning drops by…" Light panted, hands in the detective's hair.

"Forty… forty percent…" L supplied.

Their lips met again before Light broke the kiss with further words;

"And what exactly… are you trying to deduce… at this very moment?"

"About how likely it is… that we will be, at some… point, caught…"

Another kiss.

"Always the positive… thinker…"

"I would call… it practical…"

Light leaned forwards, pushing right up against L's crotch as he forced his back up against the mirror; a kiss silenced him, binding them both in an intoxicating spell. At that moment, all that existed to each of them was the other – Light and Ryuzaki, and Kira and L, bled together in the poison that constituted that kiss.

And that kiss was _worth_ a thousand words or clues or clumsy punches, because it was devoid of pretense and properness. There was no "kun" attached to the end of this kiss, and that was why it was so satisfying.

Although forcing L so far backwards on the marble surface allowed him to get his feet up onto it, where he was able to push himself upwards into his favored sitting position; and that in turn elevated him above Light a little, so that the brunette teen had to stretch upwards a little more to keep their lips interlocked.

And, ultimately, Light's trying to tug L downwards by the front of his top only caused the detective to overbalance from his precarious perching position above him, bringing him flailing down on top of him; and L's sudden weight made Light collapse backwards, his hand still twisted tightly in the fabric of L's top as inertia swore against them and left them in a graceless heap of limbs.

Light landed on his side on the sticky, glittery linoleum floor, a dull pain jarring in his elbow as the rest of his weight fell on it – L sprawled on top of him, the chain making a sound like rain as it hit the floor.

"Interesting," L muttered.

"_What_ is?" Light panted, pushing L's knee off his chest.

"Encounters of sexual interest… between us often seem to result in us… ending up on the floor…"

"_Fascinating_…"

"I think so…" L propped himself up and then sat back; Light squirmed and shifted so that he was on his back instead of at some strange twisted angle.

And then they were back in a very familiar position – Light on his back beneath L, who was straddling him, gazing down at him with mirror-like eyes so probing and curious.

L was more powerful than he looked; in almost every way imaginable. The white waif-like look he entertained conjured up pretenses that he would be easy to overpower, but for someone so small and slender, he was impossibly strong – and more to the point, he was far more dominant in his nature than his laid-back, jaded, often-lackluster behavior would ever divulge. And Light knew that was part of what made him L – the fact that you often took a second and third look at him and still couldn't believe that he was who he said he was; Light had never come across anyone who looked less like a detective – but it still surprised him a little each and every time he found himself pinned underneath him.

"Light-kun, can I tell you something?" L suddenly asked, taking his thumb to his mouth.

Light took a breath; it was shallow, a little surprised. L's new-fangled favorite question.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"When we had the cameras set up in your house… I liked watching you."

Light blinked up at him, the completely unexpected confession catching him off guard like a sledgehammer to the chest.

"_Pervert_," he hissed upwards; not sure whether he should feel flattered or disgusted, and deciding on the second.

"Oh?" L smiled a little against his thumb. "So you _did_ know they were there. I thought so."

Light blinked up him again a few more times, floored. _Literally_ floored.

"It's alright," L went on softly. "I suspected that you knew. You are very intelligent, after all. You are equal to me, and so I feel that I would be insulting my _own_ intelligence if I were to say that you could not have figured out that they were there. I am almost one hundred per cent certain that _I_ would have realized."

"And you… _liked_ watching me?"

"Yes." L gave a shrug. "You needn't seem so alarmed. You know that I do not indulge in sexual self-gratification. I merely enjoyed watching you. You are interesting."

"You're so creepy."

"Hm?" L tilted his head. "Did you not enjoy being watched, Light-kun? It is obvious that you knew you were being observed."

"Of course I didn't like being watched!" Light snapped. "Ryuzaki, that's against the _law_—"

"So, tell me," L interrupted, his voice soft and lethal, "if you knew you were being watched, and were uncomfortable with it… why did _you_ indulge in sexual self-gratification?"

Light stared up at him, horrified and mortified, and yet, strangely confused; it was a though there was a glass wall in his head, behind which several memories were suspended just out of his reach. He could remember that there had been cameras all over his house, and he could remember being aware of their presence, but he didn't know for the life of him how he had come to know of their existence or location; nor was he sure how they had come to be there.

They'd been there for a week; but there were a lot of gaping gaps in Light's memory _of_ that week. He'd been studying for his upcoming university entrance exams, that much he could remember – but that couldn't have been the only thing he'd done that week, and yet… he couldn't remember much else about it.

_Had_ he masturbated, in full view of those cameras, knowing full well that they were there, and that someone – L; and possibly his own _father_ – was watching him? He wasn't sure he remembered, and yet, it seemed wrong to deny it.

"_You knew_," L whispered. "You knew I was watching you. Did you _want_ me to see you? Are you an exhibitionist? Did you want attention? Because Kira is, and Kira does. That much I can deduce, solely from the nature of the killings."

"You're terrible," Light said brokenly.

"Yes." L tilted his head the other way. "I am."

The detective reached out with his fore-finger, gently and slowly, as though reaching for the spindle-tip; his cold finger touched against Light's throat gently and ran down it, over the bob of his Adam's (poisoned?) apple and down into the dip presented by his collarbone; and then he suddenly rocked his hips forward, brushing their crotches together through the thick friction of denim and corduroy.

Light grit his teeth, not wanting to react; because it was another mind-rape. L was so good at it, so good at slipping in through the tiniest of cracks in his consciousness, grabbing hold of the smallest error in wording on Light's part, and then tearing at it for all it was worth, digging in nails and teeth to bring blood and slash wounds deep to the bone.

But he _did_ react; he bucked his hips hard up against him, which L pushed down against with a smile.

"We're _both_ terrible," he said, sounding satisfied.

"Tell me something," Light panted, propping himself up on his elbows; his shook his head a little to get a few fronds of auburn hair out of his eyes. "Do you only like me because… I _am_ your equal? Do you… only want me because… you don't think anyone else is… _worthy_ of you?"

L paused; as though Light had finally managed to sink his own claws in.

"That is a very good question, Light-kun," he admitted finally, looking at the fluorescent strip-light directly above them.

"And do you have a very good answer for it?" Light wondered waspishly.

L was silent for a few moments more.

"No," he said finally, not sounding very concerned.

"You should."

"But I don't."

L leaned down, capturing Light's mouth in another enchanted kiss; which Light pressed upwards into to return. Bittersweet venom, and the _aurora_ of newborn feelings between the both of them, their previous actions of unwanted domination now only static afterbirth.

They kissed like enemies – but moreover, they kissed like lovers.

Bewitched; enchanted; charmed.

Wholly, utterly and perfectly _spellbound_.

* * *

Narroch: Whew! So, there _is_ something between them other than rape. Thankgod... We don't want this to turn into a certain _other _fic. (cough) We enjoyed the varied and copious responses to last chapter, there was a whole rainbow of reactions that resulted from it, and we thank you guys for taking the time to let us know what you think. It's one of the reasons why we write, we love feedback and it fuels us onwards!

**RobinRocks: **I would just like to interject here with two things. Firstly, the thing with L tying the cherry stalk into a knot with his tongue? He _can_ actually do that! No kidding! He does it in Volume V of the manga, while talking to Chief Yagami. Uh, don't worry if it didn't dawn on you, it's not something that really stands out – it's only one panel. I just have this knack for noticing/remembering really tiny, stupid, weird things from movies and TV shows and books and stuff… So I put it in!

Secondly, I found the "L font" in yet another place; namely _The Daily Mail_, a popular British newspaper.

Narroch: GAWD! Would you shut up! These ANs are too long already!

**RobinRocks: **I will after one last thing, O Drama Queen – I decided to be lame and commemorate L's "death day" by writing another fic as well, like I did for Halloween. It's called _**Self Abuse**_ and is on my profile and yes, I'm lame.

The pairing? Dare ya to go and look. :D

Narroch: Thankyou for reading, please leave a review!

- RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx


	7. Wicked Game

Well, at one point, I confess that I thought this wasn't going to get updated today, since I threatened Narroch on pain of death to send me her edited version of _Wicked Game_ by this morning and, come morning, there was no _Wicked Game_ in my inbox (though, to be fair, we are five hours ahead of Ohio in the UK).

So I threatened her again, and miraculously, it materialized. Now if only I had a _real_ Death Note…

Guys, thankyou all SO much for your support! We have **139 reviews** (I was hoping one more jammy person would bump it up to 140, but no such luck – I would have even have accepted a smiley face as a review…), while _Poison Apple_ is on the Favorites List of **60** of you, and the Story Alert of an insane **80**! We're really having a lot of fun with _Poison Apple_ and we're soooooooo glad you all like it! It really means so much to us to hear your words of support!

Of course, it also has a _lot_ to do with L and Light being so awesome together (and practically canon!). :D

Thankyou to: **Calico Avangi, Itallia, Rainbowness, LawliPop, Death-to-the-tadpoleclowns, Nokturnal Augury, Stargirl7, Venus Smurf, NuttPea, Kiyoiyuki, Banan-nonne, HammerChan, Ali, Milk0bar, FireanIce, Lara, Yearofthedragon, Dawn-at-Midnight, Oztan, Phoenix of Hell, Silent Dagger, Jenna, Inu-Yokai 911, yruahippo, Coffeshop **and **Fugitive**!!

**One thing before we begin: **Described in this chapter is a card game called "Twenty-Ones". This is a cultural difference, apparently – in Britain, we call it _Twenty-Ones_. Narroch informed me that in the USA it is in fact called _Blackjack_, and uses slightly different terminology during gameplay. We had a bit of an argument over it, since I wrote the entire original draft of this chapter and referred to it as _Twenty-Ones_, but Narroch pointed out that as most of you guys are American (presumably?), it probably would have been better to edit it to _Blackjack_. Regardless, we ended up not changing it, because we figured it might cause confusion if we were to miss a mention of it, thus rendering it flipping back and forth between "Twenty-Ones" and "Blackjack".

My further argument was that L is British (I have no proof, but I reckon he is, as are Watari and Near; with names like Mihael Keehl and Mail Jeevas, I honestly don't know about Mello and Matt…), and thus would in fact also call it _Twenty-Ones_. :D

Though on that note, do they even **play** _Twenty-Ones/Blackjack_ in Japan? Would _Light_ know WTF it is…?

Wicked Game

Debate, like any competitive activity, has rules and customs which both participants follow. The Rules of Debate are ancient, rooted in the first fertile spoken words, and they clearly delineate that most arguments inevitably end in one of two conclusions.

Either one side is proven to have the correct view and is thus determined the winner based on logical, fully supported deductions, or both positions are forced to settle at a stalemate: When there is not enough evidence, or both opinions are valid and have to coexist.

But for the hyper-intellectual (coupled with an insatiable, and probably unhealthy, desire to _win),_ these fair rules created to prevent needless struggles between men, are only fetters. Especially when dealing with arguments of a more corporeal nature.

When brute force is no longer a pleasant scenario, due to unavoidable retribution, and rational debate also stalls because both sides have equal standing, equal intelligence, and equal ambition to have their own way (stalemate be damned), it is at this point that the ancient rules are forced to bend. Or rather in this case, _degenerate_. Into something neither intelligence nor stubborn strength of will have any control over.

Pure dumb luck.

* * *

"Amusing," L observed.

"What is?"

"That we resort to this."

"I'd call it calculating," Light replied stiffly. "Or perverted."

"I really am going to have to restrict your use of that word, Light-kun. It bores me. It reminds me of Amane-san." Looking at the two playing cards suspended daintily between his fingertips rather than Light, L tilted his head a little. "Twist."

Wordlessly, Light picked up another card from the face-down pile placed between them and handed it over, never removing his gaze from the unaware L. The detective took it, sliding it in between his first two cards; his expression not even flickering.

"How about you, Light-kun?" He asked. "Stick or twist?"

Light looked down at his cards – a six of hearts and a nine of diamonds only came to fifteen, which wasn't really anything like twenty-one at all. Of course, to _make_ a perfect twenty-one, he needed a six; for twenty or nineteen, a five or a four. It was a dangerous margin to play in, but he had a good feeling.

L had won two nights in a row – it seemed highly improbable, not to mention unfair, that he should win a third time.

Though of course it would be _L_ to have devised this little system – their secret relationship was flawless but for the one small glitch that neither of them was willing to be dominated. Exasperated, Light had suggested that they take it in turns, one night after another; but L had refused, stating that that was a method far too simple and far too boring for beings of their intelligence.

Instead, he suggested _Twenty-Ones_; the quickest and most clean-cut card game he knew. Whoever got twenty-one or the closest to it got to be on top, end of story. If you went _over_ twenty-one and had to fold, despite how low the other's hand was, you were underneath, no arguments.

It was a rather brutal and unfair method, relying solely on the luck of how the deck was shuffled and cut; they always played it at the kitchen table, sitting across from each other, the deck never moving all day and all night, following the daily investigation proceedings as an innocent table-top decoration. It was always reshuffled before they dealt, and that was when it suddenly gained insuperable playing power over their fates. At least for that night.

And yet, it was the fact that it _was_ brutal and unfair that made it a satisfying method to the victor.

Which, incidentally, seemed to be L significantly more often than it was Light.

But unless he was certain that L was an expert of sleight of hand, which he was quite sure he wasn't due to the fact that he only ever used two fingers at a time for anything, including shuffling the cards, Light couldn't accuse him of cheating – and likewise, they took it in turns to shuffle the deck, and L often won even when Light had very thoroughly shuffled them.

But now, Light had a good feeling, golden gilded luck of the draw – and maybe it was influenced by the rather _determined_ feeling he had as well. He'd had two nights' worth of L's borderline-sadistic nonsense (however good it actually felt, admittedly), and he knew L resented being underneath, even when he lost fair and square. Maybe tonight he just wanted to win solely to piss L off.

Fifteen.

High, but not high enough.

"Twist," Light said, injecting a little confidence into his voice; L noticed it as he delicately winnowed the card from the top of the deck and gave it to the teenager, tilting his head again in interest.

"You seem self-assured."

"Just a good feeling."

"Then shall we?" L's dark eyes glinted. "Stick."

Their gazes met before Light looked languidly down at own hand; and then fought a bloody battle to keep his expression straight, so as not to give himself away.

_Damn it._

"Well, Light-kun?" L pressed, leaning across the table a little. "I am sticking. How about you? Would you like another card?"

"No." Light heaved an aching sigh, throwing his treacherous cards face-up onto the table frustratedly. Six of hearts; nine of diamonds; and eight of clubs.

Twenty-three.

"_Fold_," he groaned.

"Pity." L tossed his own cards onto the table, where they slid into an array of perfection – six of diamonds; four of spades; and ace of clubs.

A flawless twenty-one.

"It seems I win again."

Without waiting for Light to reply, L clambered up onto the table and slithered across it, denim slick against polished wood as he plowed through the card piles; and then, again without regard for any kind of protest that Light might display, plonked himself candidly into his lap, straddling his legs.

"I swear you fix this," Light hissed as L began to sear his neck with openmouthed kisses.

"That's unkind, Light-kun. Of course I don't."

"I want a turn tomorrow."

"You will have to win it in a fair game. The reward for victory is complete dominance. You know that – you have won it a few times yourself."

"Not as often as _you_ seem to win it."

"Perhaps I am simply more deserving." L unbuttoned Light's shirt, slipping it off his shoulders so that it fell away to his elbows. "Though you seem to be accusing me of _cheating_, Light-kun…"

He murmured it against Light's left shoulder, licking at the warm curve after the words had left his mouth.

"I never said you… were cheating…" Light said, his breath suddenly broken into corrugated gasps.

Okay, so maybe losing to L wasn't as bad as he pretended – for someone so inexperienced and emotionless, L was surprisingly adept; his technique reeked of infectious passionate urgency, yet he was still skilled enough to hold back just enough to leave Light gasping for more. He was almost sensual, if you ignored the haunting eyes and all the awkward bony angles. Perhaps it was just his genius capacity – making him exceedingly brilliant at anything and everything.

"Good," L breathed lethally between nuzzles, as he started to devour Light's bared throat and torso. "Now stop talking, Light-kun."

Light obeyed, perhaps not consciously; but when he closed those clear brown eyes in pleasure for the first time, as the detective sank further down and kissed deeply at his navel—

It blinded him to the spectacle of L slipping the ace out of his sleeve and into the back pocket of his jeans; safely out of sight.

* * *

Perhaps it was fitting that their method of affixing dominance bypassed the usual conventions and came down to a game of cards; because in almost every way possible, their entire relationship was something of a game.

It had _started_ as a game – a game of daring and bravado, of bluffing and pushing buttons. A game gone too far – and now, though hardly redeemed in itself, resulting in a relationship sure to get the both of them into very serious trouble were it to be discovered.

For L to want to fool about, regardless of whether or not it was with someone of his own gender, was not unforgivable. He was an autonomous adult, but it was rather unprofessional, given his role in the Kira Investigation.

For Light to want to fool about, this time regarding what his father would have to say if he discovered that this "fooling about" was with another male, and one that was older than him, at that, was understandable given his age, but not favorable.

For the both of them to want to fool about with _each other_, given that they were, to be titled correctly, "Lead Detective of the Kira Investigation" and "Chief Suspect in the Kira Investigation, a.k.a. Part of the Investigation Team", was _not_ going to go down well with _anyone_.

And so it had rather quickly evolved into a game of hide-and-seek; a game of Chinese whispers. In a lot of ways, the electric silence was amusing and even a little exciting; it brought the both of them a slight, sick thrill of pleasure to share a glance or indulge in a quick, fleeting grip of hands whilst no-one was looking. They took elitist delight in the ignorance of those around them, and ran with it, wings of matched intellect and perfection fluttering on their heels.

And yet, while they schemed together against those around them, they also schemed against each other – another parallel war had arisen between them, yet another wicked game, and they were each determined not to be outdone.

It was played in the form of subtly punishing one another for their dominance, dealt by instigating a more crushing form of supremacy against the punished one in question; and so it went in a vicious circle, around and around in a giddy self-referential loop.

They never voiced the existence of this game – but it was there, its subsistence as real as the sweat and semen staining their bedsheets.

Secret, like everything else, hidden between the shadow and the soul.

* * *

"I had forgotten about this."

"How could you _forget_?" Light barbed over the perfectly-in-time rhythm of their feet on the linoleum corridor floor; the hard tapping of his shoes and the soft padding of L's bare feet.

"I suppose it wasn't important to me."

"Maybe your memory is just getting _selective_ these days."

The both of them paused at the elevator door before L jabbed at the button with the tip of his finger and then slid his gaze in Light's direction.

"Do you think so?" He asked, a bored nuance shading his voice.

"Well, you didn't forget to be careful unbuttoning my shirt last night. I thought you would." They stepped into the elevator together, chain jangling at their knees. "You've ruined two already by ripping the buttons off, even though I told you not to."

"It occurred to me that loose buttons lying around the place would seem suspicious. Matsuda-san has already found three."

"My point exactly. You only remembered because it was something you cared about."

"And this…?"

"…Is obviously something you _don't_."

L shrugged as the elevator jerked and began to slide downwards.

"I suppose I cannot argue with that."

They were silent for a while, Light fidgeting with the cuff of his shirt – it wasn't sitting right underneath the sleeve of his brown V-neck jumper.

"So what is this you have to go to, exactly?" He asked eventually.

"Just a debriefing."

"On the Kira case?"

"Right."

"But… you're in _charge_ of the Kira case."

"I know." L's coal eyes flickered in Light's direction again. "_I'm_ the one _giving_ the debriefing."

Light was silent for a moment; as the elevator _dinged_ and opened again.

"But I thought you were all into not showing your face to people," he said as L stepped out and began to walk again; he followed, the chain swinging languidly between them.

"I will be addressing a secured audience of select and esteemed international intelligence personnel. Watari has already carried out satisfactory background checks on each of them."

"And that's enough to satisfy you that none of them are Kira?" Light snapped.

"You find my faith in Watari's capabilities questionable?"

"No, but…" Frustrated, Light swung around in front of L, blocking his path. "You planted cameras and bugs in my house. You stalked me to my university. You imprisoned me for fifty days. You've had me chained to you for close to _two months_…! And yet, you _still_ believe that I might be Kira, even after all that. And now you're just gonna dismiss _these_ guys because Watari performed an investigation into them?"

"Yes, I see your point." L titled his head. "How very frustrating for you. There are, however, a good few reasons why I continue to suspect you, however marginally low it may be, and disregard each of those who will be present today as suspects."

"Would you care to indulge me?" Light asked testily, folding his arms to prove that he wasn't going anywhere until he had some semblance of an explanation.

"Of course, if it would please you, Light-kun." L's gaze was intense and unwavering as it trained on Light; his hands nestled deep in his pockets. "Firstly, in accordance with Watari's background checks, there are no links which tie any of those in question with the actions of the first, second or third Kiras; which is logical, since I was not drawn towards any of them in my investigation. It is not logical for any of them to be Kira. The same cannot be said of you, however much you would protest the opposite."

Light gave a pert little nod, but said nothing.

"Secondly, it is possible to hide things if you know you are being observed, which these men did not. But _you_…" The expression in L's mirrored eyes was unreadable. "You knew the cameras were there. It would have been possible for someone of your intelligence to hide evidence of your being Kira."

"You're saying that international criminal intelligence officials aren't smart enough to hide the fact that they're Kira, but _I_ am?" Light barbed incredulously.

"Well, as ridiculous as that sounds, I do have reason on which to base this hypothesis."

"Being…?"

"Kira is equal to L. The men which I will be addressing today are not. But _you_, Light Yagami…" L's gaze still did not waver from Light's face. "…_You are_…"

After a moment, in which Light's eyes widened in time with his mouth, L pushed past him and his stunned silence and began to walk again, eventually tugging the teenager after him like a downed kite.

"It still seems risky to me," Light protested, shaken.

"You are concerned for my welfare?"

"Of course. You're my friend."

"No." L gave a little shake of his head, a trace of a smile playing at his mouth. "Not your friend. You said that once, remember? That you weren't my _friend_?"

"Ryuzaki, I was _angry_ when—"

"But don't you see? You were _right_." L _sauntered_ a little smirk. "Friends do not do what _we_ do, Light-kun."

"Then…" Light struggled to douse the rising blush. "…Shouldn't I be _more_ concerned?"

"I suppose so. But you needn't fret." L gave a jingle of his wrist, making the chain clatter. "I won't be up there alone."

Light stopped dead as his expectations unexpectedly exploded against the walls of his skull, coating him in a bright shade of flabbergast.

"R-Ryuzaki!" He spluttered, quickly hotwiring his voice into action. "You can't go up… you can't address a crowd of professional… with another guy _chained_ to your wrist! For godsakes, even if it was _Misa_ you had chained to you, you still couldn't—"

"They have each been informed that my suspect will be accompanying me."

"I bet they weren't informed that you had _chained_ yourself to him!"

"You seem terribly agitated by this, Light-kun."

"I don't want people getting the wrong idea."

"But Light-kun… there would be nothing _wrong_ about any such idea. Haven't we engaged in a relationship that would indeed constitute, perhaps, chaining together?"

"Yeah, but that's not _why_ we're chained together."

"True, but in that case, we have merely worked it in reverse."

"Hasn't it occurred to you," Light seethed, "that these international intelligence officials might not _approve_ of your surveillance methods?"

"However questionable they may find chaining a suspect to oneself, they are not in a position to enforce any power over me. I am leading this investigation, after all."

"I see," Light said coldly. "All bow down before the almighty L."

L shot him another smug little smirk.

"That does seem to be how it goes, given my reputation; and, incidentally, my skill at _Twenty-Ones_. Wouldn't you agree?"

The blush won Light over this time, memory of L's "skill" blazing across his face.

"You're not going to win tonight," he spat, ignoring the heat he could feel and knew L could see.

"We shall see. Now come." L gave a tug at the chain. "We are running late."

"And whose fault is _that_?"

"It does not interest me, and so I forgot."

"Or was it just that you found ten minutes in a dark storage closet on the way to the elevator _more_ interesting?"

"Oh, it cannot be denied, Light-kun…" L craned over his shoulder at the boy irritably trailing behind him. "You are far more intriguing than repeating six-month-old notes on the Kira case to a group of incompetent intelligence agents. Perhaps we should just go back to the storage closet."

Light rolled his eyes.

"You're so perverted."

"Light-kun, I am restricting your usage of that word as of now. It is boring me immensely."

"Yeah?" Light was a little amused. "And what if I use it?"

"We will skip tonight's game of _Twenty-Ones_. You will lose automatically."

Light glared at him, stunned into silence once again, though it was a decidedly tenser, aggressive silence.

Now prizes were on the line.

"Oh, yeah?" He hissed eventually. "Well, how about _I_ restrict _your_ use of "Kira"?"

"That is ridiculous – "Kira" is a term relevant to the case."

"You're not allowed to call _me_ "Kira"."

"That is equally ridiculous. You are a suspect."

"And _you're_ a pervert."

"Ah, but Light-kun…" L paused, turning fully to Light and grasping his shoulders. "…The difference between you and I is that _I_ make the rules."

"Since when?" Light hissed at him, their faces centimeters away from each other, mutual antagonism palatable in the air.

L only smiled, darkness under his all-knowing eyes.

"_Since always_."

* * *

"Is it a long drive?" Light asked jadedly, clipping his seatbelt over and pulling his jumper straight beneath it.

"About twenty minutes," L replied, settling into his regular owlish position.

"Aren't you going to put your seatbelt on?"

L glanced lazily over in Light's direction.

"I suppose I should."

Though he made no effort to, incidentally.

"_Ryuzaki_…" Light leaned over irritably and grasped the seatbelt in question, tugging it roughly across L's chest and snapping it into the holster. "What with Kira… you're really asking for it, you know."

"Yes," L agreed glazedly. "Kira… can kill in ways other than heart attacks. We had decided that, Light-kun."

"Right, and at this rate, you're going to end up going through the windshield," Light snapped. "Whether it's anything to do with Kira or not, incidentally."

"You seem awfully certain about this," L observed scathingly.

"It's basic highway safety!" Light spat.

L shifted uncomfortably in his seat, squirming against the seatbelt's embrace.

"It's not very comfortable while sitting in this position, Light-kun."

"Sit properly, then." Having had enough, Light turned away and looked steadfastly out of the window as the car began to move.

"I can't. If I were to sit normally, my—"

"—Deductive reasoning would drop by forty percent, yes, yes, I _heard_," Light finished testily, not bothering to look at him. "That's your problem, princess."

_Ugh_. Light caught sight of his own reflection, pale and translucent in the window of the car, and rolled his eyes in disgust. First he was comparing L to Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and god-knows-who-else – now he was actually _calling_ him "princess".

Well, as long as he kept that projection to himself – not that they bothered with pet or bedroom names…

There was silence between them for a while, during which Light gazed boredly at the blurred scenery – or the grey concrete that constituted scenery here in Tokyo – rushing by the mirrored window; L fidgeted uncomfortably with the seatbelt in the corner of his eye.

Truthfully, it had been a while since they had just sat here like this, not even looking in one another's direction, outside of the office – because the time in which they weren't under the eyes of the rest of the investigation team was time that shouldn't be wasted as far as their "personal investigation" was concerned. Being in close, intimate contact with Light seemed to be more important to L now than skimming over the same old "The Legend of Our Savior Kira" fan-sites night after night, none of which had ever offered him anything but a tired, over-analyzed husk of a clue.

Perhaps, in many ways, he was still bent on forcing a confession out of Light via pleasure or love – maybe both – but it was self-indulgence on L's part too. Maybe it was his previous non-existent experience, but he had become greedy and demanding – as though submitting willingly to his own notion of enslavement.

And maybe he was just clinging grim-death to the only person he had ever been able to connect with on _any_ level, in any way that he could.

"Light-kun?" L suddenly asked, his voice low and secretive, seemingly so that Watari who was driving, wouldn't overhear.

"Yeah?"

"Do you think that it is possible to die from engaging in too much sexual intercourse?"

"_Wha_—?!" Light blinked, cutting himself off incredulously. He turned his head sharply towards L, who was gazing intently at him, the mirrored tint of the windows playing on his eyes to make them glow almost indigo.

"Wh-what the _hell_…?!" The teenager spluttered, trying to compose himself.

And failing miserably.

L shrugged his slender shoulders.

"It was just a theory that suddenly occurred to me—"

"Oh, wait, let me _guess_!" Light barbed. "If it _is_ possible to die from too much sex, then obviously I _must_ be Kira, slowly killing you by letting you win at _Twenty-Ones_ every night and consequently _forcing_ you to screw me."

L gave a little nod, ignoring the sarcasm dripping from Light's voice – as though the words had cut his throat on their way out and were blood-drenched.

"It is possible."

"No it _isn't_."

"Actually, a male's heart rate typically increases to almost double its usual amount of beats-per-minute during intercourse. Pushed higher still, and a _heart attack_ could most certainly result."

"Well, if that's how you feel," Light snapped loftily, "perhaps we'd better stop all this. You know, for _your_ safety, Ryuzaki."

"It would only be a very _small_ percentage."

"Smaller than my probability of being Kira at all?"

"_Much_ smaller," L insisted. "In fact, it was really more of a scenario than an accusation."

"How convenient."

"Well, I consider that… if that _were_ the case, I would probably be dead by now."

Light gave a shrug.

"I guess so."

"Still…" L turned his face away, staring out of his own window. "…I wonder what it would be like to die like that…"

"During sex?" Light asked faintly.

L nodded.

"People's desires concerning death consistently gravitate towards achieving an ideal mindset. And I do wonder if dying like _that_… would be dying happy."

"Ryuzaki, that's _sick_."

"I'm sure it has happened. What I just said about the increased heart rates of the male population was entirely true."

"That doesn't mean you should _wonder_ about it!"

"I wonder about a lot of things." L, still infuriatingly composed, looked over his shoulder at Light, his gaze scrutinizing and solemn. "It's part of the reason why I'm a detective."

"Then don't you wonder… if there _is_ such a thing as "dying happy"?"

"How do you mean, Light-kun?"

"Well…" Light shrugged offishly. "Death is a scary thing. I mean, who _wants_ to die, really? People who commit suicide often think they do, but… personally, I think people who commit suicide are weak. So, I mean… those kids who slit their wrists and then bleed to death on their bedrooms floors while playing some trashy American music that they can't even understand – do you think they're _happy_ as they lie there? Even though they're dying because they chose it to be that way… Isn't that why everyone is so afraid of Kira? Because they have the power to deal death, and death is what everyone is afraid of."

L offered him a slow nod.

"That is very profound, Light-kun. So you do not believe that there is such a thing as dying happy?"

"Well…" Light gave a sigh. "…I suppose, if you were very old, and had done everything you wanted to, and you died peacefully, not in any pain… I suppose you might die happy then…"

"That is a lot to ask for, don't you think?"

"What would make _you_ happy, then?" Light gave a little grimace. "Apart from dying during sex, of course."

L tilted his head thoughtfully, and responded after a few seconds of silent cogitation.

"Catching Kira, I suppose. Or, at very least… knowing for sure who Kira _was_."

"Wouldn't Kira have to kill you for that to happen?"

"I guess so."

"Uh, well… wouldn't that make you _angry_ instead of happy? That Kira had killed you, I mean?"

L shrugged again.

"Probably, but… I know it is possible that it will happen. It is an unfortunate but unwavering fact. So, given the choice between dying by Kira's hand without ever knowing their identity and dying by Kira's hand but being able to know who they are… It is not ideal, but I know which I would choose. I could not go to my grave satisfied if the knowledge of Kira's identity was never mine to possess."

"Yeah." Light gave a small nod. "I guess… I kind of feel that way too."

L offered him a small, rare sincere smile.

"Then, since we do not know for sure who Kira is, let's stay alive, shall we?"

Light nodded, returning the amiable smile.

"Yeah, good idea, Ryuzaki…"

There was another small bout of silence between them, broken only by the _clicking_ of L's seatbelt as he finally took it off.

"Ryuzaki, put that back on, or you'll be dying _unhappily_—"

"Only if Watari crashes the car," L interrupted coolly. "Which he won't. He's an excellent driver. And incidentally…"

L leaned across and _clicked_ Light's seatbelt undone too – pausing just long enough to whisper in the boy's ear;

"…_He is so busy right now being an excellent driver, he is not watching us_…"

Light sprung a wry little smile as L leaned back again.

"You're so perverted."

L's eyebrows took a northward shuffle into his thicket of dark bangs.

"You used the forbidden word, Light-kun. Looks like I'll be taking top again tonight," he said nonchalantly. "Pity. I rather enjoy _Twenty-Ones_."

Light felt the fuse to his temper suddenly lose a more than a few inches at the statement; the desire to throw an epic tantrum deemed entirely overwhelming, and he fought valiantly to keep his gaze constant and neutral. It was _phenomenally_ unfair that L got to make up rules about what Light could call him when _he_ went around adding "kun" to this, that and the other and, more to the point, often addressed him theoretically as "Kira". But a full blown scream-fest in his face wasn't going to win the bastard over, that much Light knew – better to just keep playing, try to keep up, then overtake and trip him up…

Light was determined that he _would_ have a turn tonight, no matter what.

"Would a kiss change your mind about that?" The teenager asked sweetly, concealed temper flaring dangerously beneath a naughty smile. He leaned across the backseat towards L, smile elongating, turning seductive.

"Probably not, but it might be worth your while trying anyway."

After pretending to briefly consider it, during which time L watched him intently, as though conjecturing whether or not Light would actually decide against his endeavor, the brunette teen finally leaned across the seat and captured his mouth, his tongue carefully, almost politely, flicking across L's lips, and he readily accepted it as one hand curled to the back of his head. L's own hand grasped a handful of Light's jumper, pulling him down; so that Light was almost on top of him, their legs becoming half-intertwined.

Truthfully, Light honestly wasn't so sure that this would entirely escape Watari's notice – if he was as excellent a driver as L said, then surely he would be checking his rear-view mirror every few minutes.

And given that they were in the rear _seat_…

Not that Light thought that Watari would comment, despite the elderly man's visible cold fury at Light the day of the initial rape – the cataclysm that had led to this avalanche, this… beautiful _disaster_ of a love affair…

Watari never seemed to object to _anything_ L did; which was, in a lot of ways, like a spoilt grandchild with his indulgent, loving grandfather. He was either doing the detective's bidding or bringing him cake, despite being the one to have, presumably, raised him.

L was quite the brat, it seemed.

No, Watari probably wouldn't approve, but he also wouldn't object. Light knew that, and L most definitely knew that. Watari was just one more person that L could walk all over with utmost ease.

_In fact…_ It dawned on Light with a sentiment of unease, but maybe L _wanted_ Watari to see them. An act of insolence – like the sixteen year old schoolgirl getting herself an older boyfriend with a motorbike and twenty piercings just to spite Daddy Dearest.

He had paused, slackening his end of the kiss; and eventually L gave up and pulled back, looking sulky.

"What is wrong, Light-kun? I must say, you are not doing well at all to change my mind about tonight."

Light gave a small sigh – there seemed to be something cruel about this, just a little something that Light didn't like…

Plus, well… damn him. Thought he was boss, didn't he, the bastard…?

"Sorry," the teen murmured. "I'll try harder."

He forgot about Watari and focused on his own victory – L was getting stroppy, and eventually he would reach a point where no matter what Light did to or for him, his mind would not be changed. Light had to change his mind _before_ that cantankerous point of no return was passed.

Besides… he was _sick_ of his nonsense. L never showed much interest when Light was the dominant one – he reacted, and his body reacted, but now that he had gotten over the pain, and the entire idea of _sex, _there was something that always seemed restrained about it, or just… _lacking_. It was like trying to screw a _corpse_ sometimes. It was almost as though, while Light's endeavors instigated feelings in his body, he found them altogether a bit boring, and rode them out with the thought in mind that he might win at _Twenty-Ones_ tomorrow.

Yes, he was always far more interested when it was _his_ turn…

It was time to make him squirm.

"Let's intensify it," L said, his tone blasé, as Light's mouth paused millimeters from his throat.

"How do you mean?"

"I'll count. How does… ten seconds sound?"

"Ten seconds?" Light blinked. "Ten seconds to do what?"

"To make me change my mind."

"But that isn't _fair_!" Light protested. "How can I… _anything_… that quickly?"

"That's your problem…" Their eyes leveled up, L's dark and glinting, as though they held pieces of shattered mirror within. "…_Princess_…"

"But—"

"Ten seconds, beginning now."

Light floundered, panicking for a second or two. Damn it, he was practically pinning L to the back seat of the car – that nice shiny black car that had been the cause of so many envious glances in L's direction that day of the freshman address at Tokyo University – and didn't that mean that _he_, Light Yagami, should be calling the shots? Whoever was on top made the rules; that seemed to be how their game worked…

…Or when _L_ was on top, anyway. The rules always seem to shift and slip a little where Light was concerned…

L's smirk (leer) deepened a little and, seeing it, Light blindly thrust himself forward, thinking to work on wherever he landed. His mouth met the white cotton of L's long-sleeved top, warm from his body heat – Light always found that odd, to touch L and feel his warmth. He always looked as though he should be cold to the touch, maybe because he looked like a corpse, or maybe because he was so pale, his skin looked chilled and icy, as though made of glass…

But no, L was warm, and alive; and Light had met with his thin chest, rising and falling gently, as though to cement the proof that he _was_ alive. He moved to the right, one hand clutching at the hem of L's top, and found the jut of a nipple budding temptingly through the fabric.

L never reacted much there, but it was the only thing Light could think of.

He heard the detective utter a breath as he started to suck at him through the white cotton – though he couldn't tell if it was bored or pleasured.

He was willing to bet it was bored.

He _tried_; tightened his grip; tried using his teeth to _intensify it_.

"Three seconds, Light-kun," L breathed, sounding weary.

_Damn it!_

More angered than desperate, Light gave up trying to entice pleasure from the nub and instead straight-out _bit_ him.

He sank his teeth in as hard as he could; felt the detective seize up beneath him, as though electrocuted, and heard the choked keening gasp catch in his throat, like…

…Snow White and her bite of enchanted apple. _Poison_.

"_Ah_…! Light-kun…!" L grasped a handful of Light's brown hair, twisting it fiercely between his fingers as though he felt that hurting the boy back would make him let go.

Light bit down even _harder_ – and was very satisfied when L gave another coughing gasp and his legs suddenly thrashed upwards, clear evidence of the discomfort he was in.

Human, it seemed, despite everything – he felt pain, certainly.

Yes, _this_ was getting a reaction, wasn't it? Perhaps not the reaction L had had in mind, but a reaction nonetheless.

His only thought in mind was the fact that L fucking _deserved_ this, Light's free hand worked upwards and _grabbed_ at his crotch, worn denim scraping against his fingernails.

Almost instantly he felt a sharp pain in his abdomen, courtesy of L's foot connecting with it.

"That's… _enough_…!" L panted, the agony congealing on his voice.

Finally unlatching his mouth from L's left nipple, the skin around it broken even through his top, Light still did not relinquish his iron grip on his most sensitive area; liquid power rushing in his veins.

"Take it back!" He hissed. "We play tonight!"

L attempted to dig his foot further into Light's stomach, but bare feet were only painful at the first sharp impact – it had no effect on Light at all. L offered nothing however, only gritting his teeth, and Light gripped as hard as he could, his fingers numbing from the effort of it—

The car suddenly slammed to a rather sharp halt, and the pair of them were thrown up against the door on L's side, coming to rest in a (by this point) despicably clichéd heap – Light had released the detective's crotch in the process of the slapstick fall.

Had Watari seen them and pulled over in annoyance to lecture them? Given that they were driving to a conference hall where L was to give an address on the Kira case, and was, at present, on the back seat of the car screwing about with his main suspect, it wasn't an altogether ludicrous assumption.

But…

"We're here," was all Watari said, not even looking in their direction.

He opened the driver's door and got out; while Light and L scrambled to untangle themselves from both each other and the chain, sprawling back in their seats like naughty schoolboys under threat of detention just as Watari opened the door on L's side.

"Are you ready?" The elderly man inquired pleasantly; in fact, his pleasantness was unnerving. He _must_ have seen them, and even if he hadn't, he had certainly _heard_ them…

"I need my shoes," L replied; then added, seemingly grudgingly, "I suppose."

"I shall fetch them for you." Watari left the door open and went to the back of the car; once he was gone, L let out a breath, and then a hiss.

"That was brutal, Light-kun," he said in a low voice. "Though I confess that you took me by surprise."

"Did you change your mind?"

"I have not decided yet."

L looked away from the boy before he could protest; and then Watari was back, and Light clammed up balefully. No doubt L was thinking more along the lines of "Light-kun caused me pain, as Kira would like to, therefore Light-kun must be Kira", but there was nothing he could say in front of Watari, though he did not believe him to be ignorant.

Light was at first surprised, and then looked away in bewildered disapproval, when he saw that Watari was actually _tying_ L's shoes for him – those sneakers again, barely worn, and with no socks. Ever the spoilt brat of a grandchild.

And to think he was going to address a room of sharp professionals, high-ranking intelligence officers, from Japan and the USA and Great Britain and France and Russia and China and… well, the list went on; but the point was that he was going to go up there in the same unflattering clothes he always wore, his ebony hair in its usual wild disarray, with a teenager seven years his junior chained to his wrist, to talk to these professionals…

L might have been two, three, perhaps even _ten_ times as intelligent as they, but that hardly seemed to matter – Light usually tolerated L's preferred uniform of cotton and denim and little else, but _honestly_, would a shirt and tie now and then _kill_ him?

Light licked his palm and smoothed his own auburn hair down – it was slightly mussed from where L had grabbed at it. His pride in his appearance was such that it was as though he had taken L's unused pride in self-image as well, since the detective didn't seem to have any at all – which, incidentally, Light thought was sort of a pity, since there was something very natural about the detective, underneath the wild hair and dark circles constantly smudged beneath his eyes and dreadful clothes. With a little effort and a better-suiting wardrobe he could probably look halfway decent, but L wasn't willing to put in that effort, and Light supposed that he couldn't force him. What did it matter when you just sat about solving crime and eating cake all day anyway?

But Light himself thought it was worth putting in the effort – the thought of letting himself go to Hell the way L did made him shudder. He couldn't even _consider_ not combing his hair the way L did. He supposed deep down it was vanity, but looking good made an excellent impression on people – just the effort of a shirt and tie impressed even the most prestigious people. It was like a code, to show you were serious and dedicated about something.

And since Light appeared to have been blessed with the gift of grace and beauty, perhaps at birth, he was not wont to waste it. Often people even commented on how his name – the English meaning "radiance" or "illumination", and from the Latin _lux_ – seemed to match his looks and… well, everything about him. His intelligence, his personality, his talent. He was sunshine; beloved by all who knew him.

Dear Aurora; or Light. How perfect that name was.

Who was the fairest in the land? Why, Light Yagami, of course. Was there any _question_ of it? There was no magic mirror needed to know that.

"Thankyou, Watari." Seeming to ignore Light now, L shot a disgusted little look down at his shoes – not because of the job Watari had done at tying them, but just at the notion of shoes in general. "Shall we go?"

The detective slithered out of the car, the chain clinking and pulling until Light caught him up. L shoved his hands in his pockets as Watari closed the door behind Light, looking utterly uninterested in the address that lay ahead, and in no hurry to get moving.

And, incidentally, he didn't _get_ as far as moving – as Light gave a sudden small gasp and Watari caught L's arm, preventing him from going anywhere.

"Ryuzaki," the elderly man said patiently, "forgive me, but you cannot go in there like that."

"What do you mean, exactly?" L asked blandly, the level of disinterest present about him rising a notch or two higher still.

Light opened his mouth to answer – but found himself too mortified to utter a sound, since it was _his_ doing…

"I mean _this_." Watari plucked at L's white top, at which the detective – famous for catching the smallest of details, most often overlooked by every other self-proclaimed genius – looked down and then blinked a few times, as though he couldn't quite figure out how he hadn't noticed such an issue until now.

There was a blatant wet patch over his left nipple, turning the white cotton of his top translucent – but worse was the blood, a stark speckling of crimson, still soaking through.

"Oh," L said, his tone blasé. "I hadn't noticed." He glanced up at Watari, his expression motionless. "What shall we do? I suppose you are right, I cannot address them like this."

"Well, I don't suppose you brought a jacket with you?"

L shook his head.

"I am certain I do not even own a jacket." He glanced at Light. "Perhaps Light-kun has one?"

"Not with me, but…" Light pulled his brown jumper off over his head, offering it across. "…You can wear this. I have a shirt underneath."

L glanced at it for a moment or two before accepting it – it was clear he didn't think much of brown wool.

"Thankyou, Light-kun." After hesitating a moment longer, the detective finally pulled off his own top, leaving Watari to catch it before it hit the ground.

"We should dress that," Watari said, nodding at L's chest – at the angry red circle of teethmarks puncturing his pale skin, some of which oozed blood.

"Later." L pulled Light's jumper on over his head. "There is no time now."

He tugged the jumper straight, glancing down at it in a thoroughly unimpressed manner.

"I think that it looks better on you, Light-kun," he said finally.

Well, perhaps – it matched Light's hair better, but just because L didn't like it, it didn't mean it looked terrible on him. It was V-necked and a much snugger fit than his own top, which was probably the reason for his disguised bitching, but in a way that made him look different, it actually rather suited him. Maybe a different color would work better – black, or grey, or…

…white. _How_ passé. What was _with_ the white, anyway? Did he think he was some kind of angel of Justice or something?

"It looks _fine_," Light assured him.

L spared him an unreadable glance before turning on his heel and ambling away, hands back in his pockets.

"Come. We are most certainly late."

* * *

Incidentally, the address went smoothly – L might not know how to dress for the occasion, and he might be, at best, reclusive and antisocial, but he was adept at speaking to a large group of people.

Perhaps it was his arrogant security in his own intelligence that made him so confident – who was going to contradict him, at the end of the day? He had displayed the same aloof poise the day of the freshman address.

The intelligence officials, each representing different countries, nodded and adjusted their glasses and took notes here and there.

Light stood four feet from him, as still as he was able, given that he knew it was important not to distract the officials from listening to L. He had noticed a few glances in his direction – or, more specifically, the direction of the chain – but ignored them.

No, he simply held his head high and hung about on the platform like a pretty ornament L had brought along with him – he felt rather like a cell phone charm, actually. A sparkly thing solely for decoration attached to the main event.

In fact, he held himself so well up there – still and solemn – that it really was a shame that, at the end of the address, on their way back down the steps off the platform, L deliberately tripped him up.

* * *

"Well, I suppose we _are_ even."

L placed the deck face down off to the left before taking up his own two cards, looking across the table at Light over them; he was still wearing Light's brown jumper.

Light shrugged offishly – he supposed there was nothing to argue about here. L had relinquished and agreed to play _Twenty-Ones_. Humiliating Light by sending him sprawling non-too-gracefully down the steps of the stage in front of all those officials seemed to have even up the odds as far as he was concerned.

The brunette teen picked up his cards and glanced at them; king of clubs and nine of hearts.

Nineteen. Only two off twenty-one – a good hand. It wasn't worth taking another card.

"Stick," he said with a calculating smile.

L gave a little nod, seeming interested in Light's choice to stick.

"I will twist."

Light practically swiped the top card off the pile and handed it across, eager for the game to be over. He was so close, there was no way L was going to beat him tonight…

He concentrated on his precious king and nine; as L fooled about with his own cards across the table, before finally stating "Stick".

"Fine." Light tossed down his own cards with a satisfied smile. "Nineteen. Beat that."

"Very well." L put down his own three cards; ace of hearts, five of clubs and five of diamonds. "Twenty-one."

Light _stared_ at the cards in utmost horror. There was no way… no way in _Hell_… he couldn't have won _again_, not with _another_ perfect twenty-one…

"Well." L tilted his head, smirking. "After all that, it seems it wasn't worth playing anyway."

"W-wait…" Light shook his head in disbelief. "There's no way… you _have_ to be cheating…"

"That is a childish conclusion to jump to." L stood up. "Come."

"This isn't _fair_!" Light snapped. "If you would just agree to take it in turns—"

"I like it better this way." Seeming to change his mind about which direction he was going, L came around the table and settled himself on Light's lap again. "It seems more befitting of us, always at such odds…"

Light put his hands on L's shoulders, feeling the soft wool of his own jumper beneath his fingers; as the detective brushed his fringe aside and kissed his forehead.

"Close your eyes now," he said quietly, his voice commanding even so.

Light met his gaze defiantly for a moment or two; before resigning to his fate and letting them slide closed. He felt L's mouth, hot and wet, on his throat, and slowly whittled away at his anger at losing by reasoning that there was always tomorrow…

Although… what the hell was L doing? It felt like he was fidgeting with something even as he devoured Light's throat, and the teenager couldn't help but let his eyes slit open just a little, so that L wouldn't notice…

…the _hell_? He was tugging at the tight sleeve of the jumper he was borrowing from Light, as though…

Suddenly hit soundly over the head with realization, Light's eyes opened fully and he snatched L's wrist tightly, making him jump.

"You seemed to be having trouble," he said icily. "Here, let me help you."

L only gazed at him expressionlessly as he pulled the last hidden ace – the ace of spades – out of his sleeve.

"How long?" Light asked flatly, holding the ace up, the painful clarity of the ruse sliding into place like a knife cutting bone.

"These past three nights." L didn't even blink. "I won fair and square four nights ago. It is more difficult to hide them in this jumper of yours, you know."

Suddenly enraged – by both the fact that L had been cheating, and the fact that he didn't seem in the least bit remorseful about it; heck, he wasn't even trying to excuse it, or lie about it – Light shoved the detective off his lap, where he landed on his ass on the kitchen floor.

"You bastard!" He seethed. "You _were_ cheating! I _knew_ it!"

L shrugged, making no effort to get up from the floor.

"I simply prefer to be on top. Though I must say I am actually rather surprised that you did not catch me sooner. If it had been _you_ cheating, I am certain that you would not have gotten away with it for three nights."

"Is that _all_ you can say?" Light blazed. "If it had been _me_ cheating, no doubt it would only have raised the percentage of my chance of being Kira!"

"Not necessarily. _I_ cheated because of a desire to win, not because _I_ am Kira."

"Well, that is _it_!" Light snapped, standing up and looming over L. "No more _Twenty-Ones_. We take it in turns."

"Very well," L replied amicably. "My turn tonight, then."

Light almost laughed.

"No, Ryuzaki. It's _my_ turn. I had nineteen, I probably won anyway, and besides, since you've been cheating, you don't _deserve_ a turn. In fact…" Light grabbed L by the front of his jumper and hauled him to his feet. "…To even things up, I get two more turns as well. You have to be underneath for three nights. How do you like _that_?"

"I don't."

"Too bad. It's your own fault for not playing fair."

L shrugged again, this time the gesture a little more resigned.

"I suppose you are correct, Light-kun. Very well, it will be as you wish."

"Good," Light said testily, his rage somewhat placated by L's acceptance. "Now come on."

He began to stalk away, expecting L to saunter after him; and was therefore surprised when the chain jerked him to a halt. Whipping around angrily, he found L simply standing by the table, his usual slouching position worse than usual, making the detective positively _droop_.

"I said come on!" Light snapped, pulling at the chain.

L shot a bored glance around the kitchen.

"Can't we just do it here?"

"No! Now stop sulking and come here!"

"But it would be easier," L protested blandly, running a fingertip across the table surface.

"Stop it," Light said in disgust. "We have to eat off that."

He moved towards L to bodily drag him away from the table; the detective's enthusiasm appeared to have waned considerably now that he had lost his right to be on top for three whole nights, and as such was simply standing there with his head down, as though the weight of the entire world rested on his shoulders.

So, naturally, Light was caught completely off-guard when he suddenly moved like a fang of lightning, grasping his arm and throwing him half onto the table. Light's cheek met wood as L whipped one arm up behind his back; and then he felt the rest of the detective's weight press up against him, grinding into his ass.

"Perhaps we should just go back to the original rules," L whispered, that typical dark smirk apparent even in his voice as he leaned down next to Light's ear.

"Which would be…?" Light grunted breathlessly.

"Whoever can overpower who gets to be on top."

Enraged by L trying to change the rules yet _again_ to suit his own desires, Light pushed against the table's edge with his knees, sending them both sprawling backwards to the kitchen floor; where Light landed on top of L, hoping that it had hurt the bastard. He felt L release his arm and rolled off him, kneeling up and looking down at him, panting.

"Nice try," he snapped. "Shame it didn't work."

"Yes," L agreed breathlessly, sitting up.

"Well, I've had enough." Light grabbed the front of L's jumper again and hauled him to his feet; and then, before he could protest, grabbed him around the waist and heaved him over his shoulder in a fireman's lift.

World's top three detectives, maybe, but he was still drastically underweight for his age, and that meant Light could carry him if he wanted to.

The teen had expected him to kick and protest and demand to be put down; but strangely L didn't even bother trying to retaliate. He seemed to accept his fate of being carried to wherever Light wanted to go and went pretty much limp in his arms, not offering any kind of fight at all. Light was surprised, but grateful, and had no trouble at all taking him out of the kitchen and down the hall.

In fact, L only offered some vague sign of life when Light walked past the bedroom door.

"Bedroom is in there, Light-kun," he said, his tone deadpan as he pointed back at it.

"I am aware of that, Ryuzaki."

L gave a little sigh, but little else, and Light continued his trek down the corridor until he came to the bathroom door, which he nudged open with his elbow. Once in, he put L down unceremoniously and locked the door behind them.

"This is the bathroom, Light-kun," L observed loudly.

"I am aware of that, Ryuzaki."

"Why are we here?"

Light shot him a castrating glare.

"Don't act innocent," he snapped. "You know why we're here."

"No."

"We're trying something new." Light glanced around at all the mirrors before averting his gaze. "You'll like it."

"Is that so?"

"So you _do_ know what I'm talking about."

L gave a little shrug as his hands found their way into his pockets.

"Well, since you seem so determined to have your turn, it is only logical that any resulting endeavor between us from this point onwards would be of a sexual nature."

"Then why were you acting oblivious?" Light snapped, pulling him across the bathroom via the chain.

L shrugged again.

"Because it annoys you, Light-kun."

Light rolled his eyes in disgust, turning the taps on the bath to get a gushing stream of hot water; it was fairly large, but wouldn't take long to fill up.

"You're so childish," he muttered, debating whether or not to add bubbles – he decided to, in the end, and ignored the irony of calling L childish while pouring bubble-bath into the tub. "I mean, cheating at cards because you didn't want to lose? Deliberately annoying me? _Must_ you act like a five year old?"

L gave yet another shrug.

"How would you _like_ me to act, Light-kun?"

Light heaved an inward sigh and didn't deign to answer – he rose to L's bait too often, and now would not be one of those times.

"Light-kun?"

"Look, just get undressed," Light snapped over his shoulder.

"I don't want to."

"Then you can go in fully clothed."

"But I don't want to."

"Listen," Light seethed, finally turning to him, "this is your own fault, so I don't care _what_ you want. And besides…" The teen gave a rattle of the chain. "…We're chained together, courtesy of _you_, so if _I_ go in, you're coming in with me. Now stop bitching and take my damn jumper off."

Light was past caring now – he really _would_ drag L in fully-dressed, if he was going to choose to be obtuse. And obtuse he _was_ being; he had utterly lost interest now that he had to be underneath, and was even trying to pull the "small and pathetic" card.

Well, maybe the "big-eyed, half-starved kitten" look worked on Watari and Matsuda, but it didn't work on Light; he knew L was unaccustomed to not getting his own way, either due to his status or manipulative techniques, and it cut no ice with him. He was so furious that L had been cheating that he wondered whether he would empathize with him ever again.

Probably not.

Light pulled his own clothes off, ignoring L completely, as the bath continued to fill up with steamy bubble capped water; and, incidentally, L seemed to be disregard both of those factors, not even attempting to take off his clothing.

"Denim will weigh you down, you know," Light said flippantly, not looking at him; though knowing for a fact that he hadn't even unbuttoned his jeans.

"Would I drown?"

"You might."

"You would _allow_ me to drown, Light-kun?"

"Just take them off," Light snapped, bypassing that stupid question. "You _are_ going in, Ryuzaki."

"You are so forceful, Light-kun," L sighed.

"And _you're_ so infuriating." Light shut off the taps and tested the water with his fingertips; satisfied, he slid into the mass of deliciously hot water and clouds of thick white bubbles. "Come on. It feels great."

As though to illustrate his obtuse point, L _did_ sigh and get in – but he did it without removing his clothes.

"Ryuzaki!" Light blazed. "My jumper…?!"

"I am curious," L replied flatly. "If my attire drags me under, will you let me drown?"

"It's not _deep_ enough!" Light snapped.

"You can drown in less than two inches of water, Light-kun."

"Yeah, if you're _unconscious_!"

"Or…"

Light could read what he was about to do; but L had pushed himself completely under the water's surface before he could stop him, where he was lost from sight beneath the ice-white bubbles and thick steam.

So _now_ what? Was he going to try to _drown_ himself just to see if Light would attempt to save him? Because obviously _Kira_ wouldn't rescue L from drowning…

Light couldn't see him at all; but then again…

There was always the chain.

Light grasped the chain and started to pull on it, feeding it through his hands, until he had dragged L to him; he groped blindly under the bubbles and grasped a handful of soaked wool, using it to haul the detective above the surface.

"Will you _cut it out_?" Light spat, pushing L's sopping ebony hair out of his eyes. "You've just about ruined my jumper, and I don't know where you expected you were going to run to with _this_ on your wrist."

L shrugged.

"I was just experimenting."

"Well, how about we experiment to see how long it takes you to get those clothes off now that they're soaked through?" Light hissed irritably.

"That sounds boring."

"Too bad."

Light pushed L up against the side of the bath, working at his jeans beneath the water; it was far more difficult for him to retaliate underwater, all the power stolen from his kicks, and Light was satisfied by that. It was easier to get his jeans off if he didn't struggle. After a few minutes of not-so-delicate finagling, Light had managed to peel the pants off, with no help from L whatsoever, and pull them away, throwing them onto the floor of the bathroom in a heavy sopping heap. He then turned back to—

"_Hey_…" Light blinked a few times, his hands on L's hips. "You're not wearing underwear."

L titled his head lazily.

"No, not today. I didn't expect to be caught, you see."

Light gave an incredulous little snort.

"Horny-much?"

"It is just easier."

"So you're saying… that you went up in front of all those intelligence agents to give an address… _with no underwear on_?"

"That is correct." L tilted his head the other way. "I hardly see what difference it makes. It is not noticeable. You yourself were unaware until just a moment ago."

"But that… that is _so_…" Light floundered.

"…Perverted?" L supplied boredly.

"Among other things, yes."

L chewed at his thumbnail and averted his gaze to the ceiling.

"Is it sexy?"

Light gave another snort, this one choked on a bubble of barely-concealed laughter.

"It always sounds so weird when you say that word."

"Why? It is only a word."

"Because you're about the most _un_sexy person I've ever met."

L glanced back at him.

"Is that meant to be crushing and insulting?"

"No." Light shrugged. "I'm just being honest."

"And yet you still pursue this kind of relationship with me," L said absently, looking away again. "Interesting."

"Well… sex appeal isn't everything. A relationship doesn't mean anything if you can't trust the other person."

L really _did_ appear interested now, leaning forward towards Light a little.

"And would you say we trust each other, Light-kun?"

Light faltered slightly, before replying softly;

"Mostly, I guess. I… I trust _you_, even if…"

"Yes. I understand." L gave a small sigh. "And I wish that I _could_ trust you more than I am able to, Light-kun."

Light gave a sad little smile.

"Well, I don't know how to help you there."

"Only evidence against your being Kira can do that."

"Isn't this _relationship_—?"

"No. Kira could love L." L paused. "…L could love Kira."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Yes. One hundred per cent, Light-kun." L gazed at Light for a very long time. "You know, I have never wished myself wrong before. It would hurt my pride immensely to confess to being so, but… concerning you, Light-kun, I hope that I am."

"You are."

"But you saying that doesn't make it so. Anyone could say that I am wrong. It is meaningless, despite your intelligence, Light-kun. _You_ saying it doesn't make it any more substantial than if Amane or Matsuda-san said it, and you are aware of my opinion of their intellect."

Light gave a small nod; reaching for the hem of the soaked jumper L was still wearing.

"Well, can you at least trust me on _this_?"

L didn't reply, but allowed Light to finally peel the jumper off and throw it aside.

"Does that still hurt?" Light questioned, touching gently at the bite-marks he had left imprinted into L's skin.

"It stings slightly."

"I'm sorry."

"No you're not." And when Light looked up at him, L continued; "You did it because you felt I deserved it. Perhaps I did; perhaps not. Either way, you are not sorry."

"Mm, well… now that I know you were cheating…"

"You are very sore about that, Light-kun."

"Don't I have a right to be?" Light snapped.

"I suppose."

"Wouldn't _you_ be annoyed?"

"Supremely, Light-kun."

Light sighed inwardly – just how in all of _Hell_ had he managed to become so intimately entwined with such a childish, eccentric hypocrite? It seemed an impossible feat, and yet he, Light Yagami, had managed it almost effortlessly…

What did _that_ say about him (apart from the fact that he seemed to attract weird insomniac detectives)?

"Come on, before the water gets cold…"

He took L's shoulders, moving him along the bath a little to the corner, where he could push him to an easier and more comfortable angle; and then placed his hand at the back of his head to stop him going under the water.

Light settled himself between the pale legs, leaning closer to his face as he felt L grip at his hips from beneath the water's foamy surface; he anticipated this as being easy, given the water and the angle and the fact that L finally seemed to have accepted that he was underneath tonight—

That was, until L's placid demeanor suddenly vanished in another flash of trickster lightning and, without warning, he heaved at Light's hips, jerking him forwards as he slid his own legs downwards beneath Light to a position where the detective could easily thrust himself upwards and impale him.

Thoroughly unprepared for such a turn of events so late in the game, Light's eyes widened and he gave a harsh cry of infuriated surprise and discomfort as his body seized up, struggling to adjust to the violent intrusion.

"_Bastard_…!" He groaned. "You're supposed… to be _underneath_!"

"But I _am_ underneath," L smirked.

Which, in all fairness, was perfectly true – they were in exactly the same position they had been in only a moment ago, except that L had managed to cheat Light out of his rightful turn yet _again_.

"No!" Light cried angrily, suddenly reaching forward and grasping L's hair; and without thinking about it, shoved the grinning, triumphant face completely under the water.

And while he thrashed and kicked, Light managed to extricate himself from their hasty pleasureless union, certain that he was bleeding and equally certain that he might well hold L under until he really _did_ drown.

Though that endeavor did not last long; L got a grip on his arm under the water and sharply dragged his nails down it, their ragged edges due to being bitten drawing blood.

"Ah!" Light let him go and L broke the surface with a gasp, rising from beneath the clouds of bubbles like some enraged mer-creature.Mermaids, now?

_(Yes, trade your voice for legs, Ariel; so I don't have to listen to you talking…)_

"Trying to kill me, Light-kun?" L whispered breathlessly.

"Trying to screw me over _again_, Ryuzaki?" Light snapped in response.

"You should be more prepared."

"_You_ should play fair!"

"Is _anything_ fair between us, Light-kun?" L asked, his tone innocent; and, as Light paused to consider such a careful question, he rammed himself into the boy and shoved _him_ under.

Light struggled against him, knowing that L wouldn't drown him but fighting anyway, and managed to shove up against his thin ribcage – wondering if they would break if he pushed hard enough.

But even ramming upwards against his ribs didn't seem to break L's grip at all, so Light reached higher, dragging his nails across the closing wounds his teeth had made earlier and opening them again – L shrank back, letting him go.

"Okay," Light panted, coming up and grasping at the side of the bath. "This was… a bad idea…"

Without waiting for L to reply, and _certainly_ not waiting for L to push him under again, the teen scrambled out of the water, shaken. He hadn't thought L would be such a _demon_ about all of this…

But clearly, to do the math: Body of water plus uncooperative L equaled Utter Disaster of a Sexual Encounter, with a side order of Near Drowning.

L scrabbled out of the bath as well as Light panted on the side; Light was thoroughly tempted to shove him right back in again, and in fact turned towards him – and was caught off-guard yet again when L tackled him to the tiles on his back.

"Bad idea," the detective echoed icily. "Yes."

The water and bubbles, however, made it difficult for each of them to hold onto the other, and Light managed to wriggle out of L's grip, using his legs to take L to the floor as well; they slipped on the smooth tiles and rolled over a few times until Light was sprawled on top.

"Yes," L said again, his voice slightly lulling. "We are destined… to fight like this, I think…"

"If you'd lie still… I could still have my turn," Light replied breathlessly.

L wordlessly replied by shoving upwards, pushing Light aside; but Light grasped his wrist and pulled him to him, seething.

"Why are you _doing_ this?" He hissed. "Just because… you're not getting what… _you_ want!"

L reached around and dragged his nails down Light's back, making him twist and gasp in pain; the teen slammed his elbow squarely into the middle of L's chest, knocking him back.

"Precisely," L hissed, rubbing at his chest where Light had smacked it. "I am not… a robot… I do have feelings…"

"Well, so do I!" Light blazed. "And I feel… that you're being unfair…!"

"I never argued… against that fact…"

Light slammed him in the chest again, knocking him to his back.

"You're _not_… getting your way tonight!"

"Then do you propose… that we fight until… neither of us has the energy… to do _anything_?"

"No." Light leaned over him, pinning his shoulders to the tiles. "I propose… that you start playing… by the goddamn _rules_."

"The rules that _I_ made?" L smirked, slipping aside and pushing Light partway off. "Those rules were made… for _you_, Light-kun."

Furious, Light cocked his fist back and punched him straight across the face, knocking him down yet again; and saw blood on his pale lip, at which L grimaced and spat onto the white tiles.

"I do not care for the taste of blood," he said, looking up at Light through streaks of sodden jet hair; as though he felt that he needed to explain his distaste.

And then he suddenly leaned upwards, pressing his mouth to Light's; and Light could taste the metallic blood on him, pulling away in disgust.

"Do you?" L asked him, leaning further into him; showing him those mirrors clearer still than any of the four scattered around the bathroom.

"No," Light panted, averting his gaze; though it was difficult to get away from L when he insisted on leaning right up against him, licking away the bubbles on his throat.

"Yes. It tastes of humanity," L murmured against Light's neck.

"But you _are_ human." Light touched at the blood on his mouth.

"Sometimes," L sighed, "I wish I wasn't."

Before Light could question his meaning, L had grabbed his wrist, twisted him around and thrown him to the tiles on his face; twisting his arm up behind his back and pushing down against him, as he had done earlier against the table.

"Then I wouldn't need the things that humans need," the detective finished in a low voice, feeling Light struggling underneath him. "I wouldn't need _you_."

"Wha—?"

Light cut himself off – his voice and struggles both – and both he and L looked up when the sound of L's cell phone suddenly went off. It sounded slightly garbled, however; but nevertheless, L released Light and got off him, sliding across the wet tiles over to his soaked jeans and going through the heavy, still-dripping pile of denim to retrieve the phone.

He extracted it from the pocket with two fingers and flipped it open—

Which was when it sparked and gave up the ghost; L dropped it, where it clattered on the tiles, a few little static death throes coming from the back.

"Not waterproof?" Light stated rather than asked from where he was a few feet away.

"It would seem so." L prodded the dead phone with his forefinger; withdrawing it sharply when it gave off another small spark. "I wonder who was calling."

"Watari?" Light offered. "My father?"

"Possibly. Come. I suppose I had better go and find out. It might have been important."

"How can you find out?"

"Watari will know. As you said, it may have been him anyway."

L got up and went to the towel rack, pulling Light with him, taking off towels for them both. Light turned away to wrap his around him – and felt L run a hand over his wet back, which stung slightly.

"Your back is bleeding," he said.

"That's because you _scratched_ me." Light looked over his shoulder at him. "You're bleeding too. Your lip, and… where I bit you…"

L tilted his head.

"It is natural for a relationship to be so destructive?"

"For _us_… probably."

L glanced over at the redundant bathtub; still hot and foamy.

"Later, then?"

"_What_?" Light blinked at him. "After all that… you _still_ want to… I mean, you…?"

L shrugged.

"I'm not making any promises about how cooperative you will find me, but perhaps, Light-kun…" He started out of the bathroom, snatching another towel off the rail on his way past to dry his hair; dragging a bemused Light along with him.

"…Perhaps it is that you are simply not _persuasive_ enough."

* * *

"I am not sure… if I would call this persuasion… or bribery…" L panted, his voice broken and breathless.

"Shut up…!" Light snapped, pushing him harder up against the headboard.

Okay, so maybe promising to buy someone éclairs was a slightly unorthodox way of getting them into bed, but it seemed to work on L. Sweet words were worthless, but sweet _things_ were not – L had agreed to suffer being underneath as long as Light kept his promise.

And incidentally, Light had vowed to stop playing by the rules now too; if he had to _bribe_ L, then why should _he_ make it easy for the bastard?

And while the sound of L's deep staccato breathing was good to hear, it was a rule in itself that L was never as responsive when he had to be underneath – and if Light could not earn moans or gasps of his name, then he made it his mission to earn _something _from the stubborn man.

So when he slammed the detective hard up against the headboard yet again, and heard him give a small, stifled hiss of pain, he smiled to himself.

Ever the same, this wicked game.

* * *

**RobinRocks:** Heh heh, they're so naughty (and L is so difficult)… And lookit, a random _Little Mermaid_ reference thrown in there.

I can't stand that movie… O.o

**Narroch: **Wow… Light really sucks at this game! XD

**RobinRocks: **In other _Poison Apple_-y news… Well, it's actually old news, but I never got around to mentioning it before now:

The very talented **Worren** over at DeviantART made a banner for _Poison Apple_. I designed it, but I wouldn't even know where to START making one, so I got her the pics and fonts and stuff and she made it for me. It's totally awesome, with a tag-line and everything, so… if you are interested in just taking a peek at it, it is on the LJ that Narroch and I share. There is a brand new link in my profile to the exact page with it on. It's just our Info page, so… blah, you don't have to stay long. There's only a platinum edition of _The Sin of Defiance_ on there anyway…

Oh, and if you go there, you can see our icon, which was something else I designed and wouldn't have a hope in hell of making, so **AutumnDynasty** made it for us! It's animated and has L on it… :) Oh, and the icon on my actual page – another L one, once again designed by me and made by someone else (AutumnDynasty again!) because I just suck at computers…

Wow, people must get so sick of my computer-failings…

BUT at least I can post to Yay for me!

Hey, anyone seen the _Death Note_ dub? I was so looking forward to it, but… oh dear, how I laughed. Light has a real "I-choose-you-Pikachu!" thing going on… His Japanese voice suits him so much better…

**Narroch:** Yes yes, hope you enjoyed! Leave us some love! It really means a lot to us!Till next time then!

- RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx

P.S: _How_ did L and Light get their clothes off without removing the chain? _Magic! _


	8. Just One Bite

**Narroch:** We have developed something of a pattern here. We have updated this story on Halloween, Guy Fawkes' Day, and so in keeping with the unintentional holiday update theme, we thought it best to do this chapter on Thanksgiving!

Yay! Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!111!!

It is my personal favorite holiday, spending time with family, eating the most delicious food, and not having to worry about buying any presents or whatnot… It is quite simply awesome. And I feel so sorry for anyone who doesn't get to celebrate it. (which includes RobinRocks, no turkey for you silly Brit! Mwahahaha!)

This chapter incidentally is also my favorite that we have done so far. I just love it so much, for many reasons, which I won't spoil for you as fresh readers. But definitely let us know what you think in a review, I am particularly curious since this chapter is my baby. Speaking of reviewers, here is a great big THANKYOU to everyone who has reviewed: **Mask of Mirage, Jyrenze, Elegantarrow64, Coffeeshop, Kiyoiyuki, Nokturnal Augury, Dawn-at-Midnight, Rainbowness, Stargirl7, Itallia, Sister Salsa, Oztan, Phoenix of Hell, Travian Sez, Death-to-the-tadpole-clowns, AutumnDynasty, Urmaivertigo, sexyghost, Zaybex, Yaoihentaiqueen, L'Animalerie, Inu-yokai911, Ali, Sophabelle, Yruahippo, Lara, FireanIce, Jenna, Yearofthedragon, Venus Smurf, Nocens **and **Love comes in many forms**!!

**RobinRocks: **I would just like to point out that this is being actually being updated the day AFTER Thanksgiving due to Narroch's whiny excuses. D: I waited up until _five-in-the-freaking-morning_ here in Britain trying to get it posted and it just didn't happen…

So happy _post_-Thanksgiving.

Just One Bite

L was punishing him.

It was so subtle, so silent, so _devious_, that Light did not notice at first – but L was punishing him, and now that he knew, he was Mad as Hell.

What had he done?

At first, Light had been mystified, sitting for endless perplexed chunks of time during the day, his thoughts accompanied by the soundtrack of keyboards and printers and copiers and L crunching sugar cubes off to his left – whole blocks of precious Catch-Kira-Go-Team-Go! time being eaten away in ten or fifteen minute slices by the burning question of "What have I done _now_?".

Then it had dawned on him (_thankyou, sweet Aurora_), and _that_ was when he had gotten Mad as Hell.

L didn't want to take turns. L wanted to go back to _Twenty-Ones_, where he could hide three aces up each sleeve and scam Light out of his rightful turn night after night. L was, in fact, pissed off – _majorly_ – by the fact that he had been caught four nights ago, and by the fact that Light had bribed him into being "underneath".

Yes, they had been good éclairs, but Light had bought them for him a whole four days ago, and now he found himself… _éclair-less…_

_So_ the drama.

L didn't like Light to be on top. Okay, so it wasn't as boring as listening to Matsuda prattle on about how switching gas companies had brought down his monthly bills – but then again, _nothing_ was _that_ boring…

There was just something about it that made him sigh inwardly. Maybe it was the seven year age-gap, or maybe it was even the whole "something-like-four-percent-chance-he-was-Kira" thing; maybe both. L liked "Kira" to be underneath him, not vice versa. That was how it was supposed to be, right?

Heavens, he wasn't doing his _job_ properly if he let Light screw him. Such was his reasoning, anyway.

Though Light was bigger than him, and had had enough of L's con acts, and had taken to fighting if L tried to screw him out of his turn. Not that L couldn't defend himself, but bruises looked so dark and ugly on his snow-white skin, and always took so long to fade away…

So he had switched tactics, opted for a slower acting poison, but just as potent in the longer run – let the Yagami boy have his every-other-night turns then, if they meant so much to him…

There were certainly _other_ methods of getting his way.

As Light had discovered, incidentally. And yes, this punishment was so ordinary, so everyday, it seemed, that Light didn't notice at first, the effects dripping slowly yet steadily into his system like an IV, the needle invisible under his skin but still directly feeding him an understated vengeance. But now, as he sat at his laptop at only nine-thirty in the evening, barely able to keep his drooping eyes open, the retribution suddenly seemed screamingly obvious to him.

L was deliberately – and ever so subtly – depriving him of sleep.

_Bastard_.

The main reason it had taken Light so long to realize that L was… _torturing_ him was pretty much because L tortured him on a daily basis anyway, what with "You are Kira" this and "You're chained to me so you can't do that unless I give you permission to, which I'm not going to, so there" that.

He was so used to L waking him up during the night due to the chain rattling or sweet wrappers rustling or the coffee maker hissing that he hadn't really clocked it as unusual at first – yet it _was_ unusual. L was deliberately pestering him the whole night through – he never seemed tired at all, not even after a bout of intense sex. He'd just get up and put his clothes back on and turn on his laptop and go down on the floor by the bedside the way he always did.

Well, mostly – those were actually the _better_ nights.

It was, ironically, _worse_ when L opted to stay in bed with Light, because his dogged determination at interrupting each and every REM cycle Light started was simpler to do when nestled right up to him under the covers. Once there, he was clingy and wriggly and fidgety and a nuisance. He pawed at him and breathed on the back of his neck and played with his hair, acting innocent and naïve when Light irritably batted him away.

And he didn't just do it for fifteen minutes or so.

He did it _all night_.

Or sometimes he'd leave off, just long enough to let Light fall asleep – and then as soon as he noted the boy's slow even breathing, he'd crawl over and wake him up again, kissing him or biting at his ear. Once or twice Light tried shoving him out of bed, but he would just skulk straight back up, peering balefully up from the floor, two black mirror eyes just floating over the edge of the mattress, like some vile little ghost bent on haunting him. He'd whine that he was lonely, and beg Light to stay awake and talk to him, though Light did not believe that L had ever felt lonely in his entire life, really. He was a self-elected loner, reclusive and socially-inept. He didn't _like_ people very much.

"But you aren't 'people', Light-kun," L would reply when Light grouchily pointed that out. "You're my best friend. You're… my _only_ friend."

"I'm your bed-buddy," Light would snap, tiredly turning away.

"You can be both."

"And right now I'm neither." He'd push L fiercely away. "Get lost."

"Please talk to me, Light-kun." L would clamber on top of him, hunkering down to hover right over his face. "We can talk about anything you want."

"How about we talk about how _annoying_ you are?!" Light would seethe, exhausted.

"Would that interest you?"

Light would groan disgustedly and push L away yet again, desperately trying to fall asleep.

It was the same nagging pattern, night after night – L had never been this bad, and though it had taken Light a while to figure out the detective's reason for doing it, now he knew.

It was revenge, but revenge with an added perk; no doubt L was hoping that Light would eventually become so exhausted due to a lack of sleep, he would grow to be easy to overpower, or even get to a point where he was too tired to have his turn, and wouldn't even object to L taking it.

In fact, it was beginning to get that way; Light's main priority now was sleeping, finding himself even eager for the sex to be over so that he could just roll over and curl up and try to get even a few hours in. His tiredness was affecting his work and his appetite and his temper, causing his deliberations to grow stale mid-thought as his brain refused to process information through sleepless gummed nerves, and of _course_ L had noticed the sudden plummet in efficiency, but he didn't seem to care remotely.

At the back of his mind, it was apparent to Light that he could end all of this suffering if he would simply allow L to be on top _every_ night – that was what the brat wanted, after all. But despite this torturous drawn out state-of-affairs, Light still couldn't find it within him to back down to L; his pride wouldn't allow him to fold so easily and just give the bastard what he wanted without a fight.

He couldn't be so weak – even if it meant his own father snapping at him for falling asleep at his desk during investigation hours.

Though the sweet, apologetic little smile L offered Chief Yagami in response, while saying something about "Too many late nights continuing with the investigation", made him forget all about his bone-deep exhaustion for just a moment, since it was plastered over with a sudden murderous urge to cave the lying bastard's skull in with a photocopying machine (yes, Light might not have the strength to stay awake at only eleven in the morning, but he was quite certain that he would be able to lift up a photocopier and paste L with it – the bulkier the better).

Ultimately, that was why he battled on, why the smooth scorpion curled in his chest stung painfully with every missed opportunity to put L in his place – though it was hard and draining to fight with L all the time. Light wasn't used to constantly battling with people like this; he was used to getting his own way by method of a flash of his brilliant smile, or perhaps a toss of his shiny auburn hair. But then again, he supposed L was used to simply snapping his fingers and getting what he wanted too, and that was why they found themselves fighting like this, swords drawn and clashing.

L was determined to get his own way – and Light was equally determined that he wouldn't allow him to.

Though it was not really _swords_; more a sort of petty, childish slapping at each other, with a little hair-tugging thrown in, like toddlers squabbling over Lego bricks.

It made the tension between them tighter-strung than ever – but since that tension had always been there, it went largely unnoticed by those around them. Their cagey silence made sexual and dominant tension indistinguishable from their regular "must-not-be-outdone-by-this-bastard" battle of wits.

Though, incidentally, Chief Yagami would probably find himself the victim of yet another non-Kira-related heart-attack if he were to realize that the reason his son kept shooting blazing glances in L's direction was because said genius detective was grinding him into the ground (and the mattress) and not allowing him to rest; or the reason that L himself had taken to gazing up at the ceiling so much more now was because he was certain that there must be storage closets floors above that he had yet to make a sudden swerving detour into, dragging a chained, helpless Light after him.

The bottom line was that, although Light had been the one to set this snowball rolling, L had practically shoved him out of the driver's seat; and if Chief Soichiro Yagami was to know that the world famous detective he put so much trust was in fact screwing his son (and, reluctantly, being screwed by his son), it wouldn't take Kira to kill him.

Which, incidentally, was just another of L's aces, pulled from his sleeve stylishly whenever Light complained about the fact that he lied to his father so much;

"I am very aware of just how much faith your father puts in me," L would say dully, stirring twenty thousand sugars into his tiny little teacup with his tiny little teaspoon, the dainty way in which he held both a bizarre contrast to how blunt his words were; "And believe me, Light-kun, I have that same amount of trust in your father. He is an excellent police officer, and a good man. However, I do not think he would take kindly to my telling him the truth of what transpires between us at night, do you?"

Light would blush furiously and fold him arms.

"I suppose not…" he would mutter, looking away.

L would nod, satisfied, and sip at his tea; and Light would want to knock it upwards into his face, but it seemed pointless to do so, since he couldn't run away afterwards, so he never did.

No; "Daddy, I'm sleeping with L" would not go down well _at all…_

Light often wondered if _anyone_ could tell; that was to say, if Aizawa or Mogi or… Matsuda… Well, maybe not Matsuda, but he did wonder if it was possible that any of them had figured out, or at least speculated, that he and L were… "having it off" with one another.

Probably not. Despite the chain and the notions it dreamed up, they were both excellent actors – they barely looked at one another during investigation hours. Although maybe L wasn't acting; he was still luridly, scarily bent on catching Kira, and was able to utterly ignore Light if it pleased him.

It was just a pity that Light didn't have the ability to ignore L, because that would solve all of his problems.

Though what chilled him most about L – and their relationship – was that, aside from not once ever lowering the percentage of Light's possibility of being Kira… Light could remember that conversation they had once had, drenched in the dark, before they had ever progressed this far; where L had said that, no matter his feelings, or his lust, or his _love_, if Light truly _was_ Kira, he would not spare him justice.

Light was certain that he wasn't Kira, and so, at the end of the day, was equally certain that he had nothing to worry about on that front – but still, the degree of L's passion was terrifying.

How much could you truly love someone if you were so willing to destroy them?

That question was the disquieting ultimatum that smoldered incessantly in the back of his skull, charring the edges of his mind late into the night, while he lay trying to ignore L and his laptop keys and his coffee-maker, the sheets sticking to his exhausted body and the bewildered love he felt for L, despite everything, sticking to his exhausted mind.

And sometimes another more clandestine question, as he finally managed to sink beneath the surface of sleep; a sobering lull that drew a heavy shroud around him and eased him away from L, and from the chain, and made him forget, and simultaneously made him _remember. _When the sharp shifting dreamssent him backwards spiraling through a forest of thorns, become lost in the darker twisting recesses, and then step through a gateway into a latent realm of his mind locked away from him while awake – some hypnotic _aurora_-kingdom, where secrets, the things that L wanted from Light more than anything, glimmered like jewels, strewn about as glimmering baubles of truth, within reach but never taken.

If he could take L's hand, and lead him there, and let those beams of gold rise upon that snow-white face, and place that sought-after jewel in his hand and close his fingers around it—

L would smile.

And L would destroy him.

So maybe that was why… the _other_ question…

_Tell me, L, my love… How would you like to die?_

* * *

"It has occurred to me," L said, crouching over Light, who was turned away from him, shattered and halfway-asleep, "that there must be one piece of solid evidence against Kira."

"Like _what_, exactly?" Light moaned sleepily.

"At _least_ one," L went on, tilting his head, and ignoring Light's question completely. "Perhaps more."

"You mean… an item?"

"Right." L skated his icy fingertips down the length of Light's arm, making him shiver as his flesh prickled at the sensation. "Solid evidence. One thing, one item… that would tie them to the crimes."

"Mm." Light gave a tired nod, his eyes firmly closed.

"Light-kun." L dug his nails into Light's hot skin. "Don't fall asleep. Listen to me."

"I _am_ listening… to you…" Light shrugged L away irritably. "You need evidence… I _know_ that…"

"The _gun_," L whispered, pressing the tips of his first two fingers against Light's temple. "Or the _knife_." His fingers slid down the side of Light's face, skipping across his throat. "Or the _axe_." He made a sudden hard chopping motion with the edge of his hand against Light's shoulder.

"Kira doesn't kill… with those things…" Light murmured, chilled by the spontaneous enactment but too tired to voice his discomfort; it was slightly revolting how L could so easily twist himself into a creature with apparent murderous tendencies, given that he was supposed to be in charge of catching a real murderer.

"I know that, but… there must be _something_." L shook Light a little. "Like those tapes the second Kira sent into Sakura TV. Forensic evidence linked them to Misa Amane."

"Yes." Light twisted away from the detective. "But that it isn't… enough for you, is it?"

"Amane?" L scraped softly at Light's arm again. "No. Not enough."

"Get _off_!" Light snapped, flailing his arm backwards to bat L away.

L caught his wrist, the boy's watch clinking against his palm; and then, on hearing that clink, held his wrist still, gently scraping at the metal links with his nails as the inkling solidified into a suspicion. At first Light tried to pull his arm back, but when L insisted on holding on, grew too tired to fight, and let it fall limp in his grip.

"Maybe it wouldn't be the murder weapon," L murmured, the watch face glinting in his eyes. "The tapes weren't. Maybe it would be something simple. Something everyday, something easy to overlook. A set of keys, a notebook, a tie-pin… maybe even a _watch_…"

"Like mine?" Light muttered sleepily.

"Like yours." L clawed at the clasp, picking it undone with his nails, and slid the watch off Light's slim wrist; he looked intently at the indentation of the links left behind, imprinted deeply into the boy's skin. "You always wear this watch."

"Habit," Light said sleepily. "I forget… I'm wearing it. My dad… does it too…"

"Not uncommon," L agreed, holding the watch up; dangling it between his fingers. "It is a nice watch, Light-kun."

"It was… a graduation present… from my dad."

"It is a year old, then?"

"About that."

"You have never removed it?"

Light yawned, snuggling deeper down into the dark warmth beneath the covers.

"Prob'ly," he murmured, almost asleep.

"You probably have or you probably have not?"

"Prob'ly… have… sometime, I guess…"

"Light-kun, wake up. I'm trying to interrogate you."

Light only sleepily reached up without looking, and after a second of blind groping, found L's hand and took his watch back.

"Go 'way, Ryuzaki…" he murmured, withdrawing his arm back beneath the folds.

"You took your watch back," L said sharply, pushing at Light. "Are you hiding something?"

"Take it, then…" Light clumsily thrust it back at him. "Just don't… break it…"

L glared at him for a moment or two, but Light who had finally – almost – gotten to sleep, didn't react to the stare and offered him nothing more than the beginnings of a soft snore; and so the detective settled for sulkily clawing at the watch, not really very interested in it. It had been mere speculation – he did not expect Light's watch to hold any valuable clues, and eventually he snapped it back onto the sleeping boy's wrist.

He lay down on his side against Light's back, resting his head between the teen's shoulder blades – but he wasn't tired, and it wasn't comfortable, either. He was fully dressed and Light was almost naked, his skin hot and a little sticky. He licked at the back of Light's neck, but he rather detested the salty taste of sweat, and Light didn't stir – so eventually he let go and wandered off as far as six feet of chain would allow him to.

Which wasn't very far.

That was, if he left Light lying where he was…

* * *

Light woke up on the floor, shivering.

He was shivering because he was without a duvet and because he was naked but for black boxers and because the window was wide open, and it was blowing an icy splintered wind into the room.

He wondered if he had fallen out of bed; but on sitting up, and gathering his bewildered wits together, rendered that to be an impossibility, since he didn't seem to be bruised and, more importantly, because he was nowhere near where he _should_ have been if he _had_ fallen out of bed.

He was nowhere near the bed _at all_, actually.

He was over by the wide-open window, and concluded therefore that L must have moved him; L wasn't very big, but Light judged the distance from the bed to the window, and was certain that L probably could have carried him.

But _why_?

And where _was_ L, actually?

Light sat up properly, rubbing at his bare arms to counter the cold breeze as it swirled past him and plucked up a few strands of his hair to play with; it was _October_, for godsakes… He glanced about and found his white long-sleeved shirt lying discarded nearby, where L had chucked it earlier; he pulled it on, leaving it unbuttoned. He felt the chain clink as he did so, and followed the length of it across the floor and…

…_out of the window…_

L was standing on the outer windowsill, clinging precariously to the window-frame and leaning forward as though he was about to…

…_jump_…

_Kira!_ Light's mind suddenly screeched as the brunette scrambled to his feet, all nuances of sleep instantly jolted out of him by the breakneck shot of fear that spilled through him along with an injection of adrenaline. Had Kira gotten his name, was he going to jump and destroy himself on the killer's chilling command…?

"Ryuzaki!" Light cried, stumbling in his panic to the window. "Don't!"

L turned his head to look over his shoulder at him, a slender note of surprise lifting his eyebrow.

"Don't what, Light-kun?" He asked.

"Don't _jump_, idiot!" Light snapped, grasping hold of the hem of L's top; he supposed that, at the end of the day, there was always the chain to stop him too, but then again, the terminal velocity could haul Light out with him, and then there'd be _two_ of them down there splattered on the sidewalk…

L blinked at him.

"I'm not going to jump, Light-kun." He turned his face away again. "I am just admiring the night-lights. Tokyo is a very beautiful city at three in the morning."

Light gaped at him, speechless.

"I… I-I thought…"

"Kira?" L supplied softly, not looking at him.

Light's frantic concern rapidly evaporated beneath the heat of his rising temper.

"_Get in here right now_!" He seethed. "Scaring the fucking _life_ out of me…!"

L tilted his head, his black eyes still on the glimmering sea that was 3am Tokyo.

"Scared to death. That _would_ be ironic, Light-kun…"

"_In_!" Light blazed. "_Now_!"

"You sound like Watari, Light-kun."

"_Ryuzaki!_"

Light L gave a sigh, turning around on the windowsill so that he could climb back in. Despite his spiked anger, and resolve to pound L into the bedroom wall once he got him in here, Light offered the detective his hand to help him back up. L reached for it—

And that was when he slipped.

He grabbed the collar of Light's loose shirt as he lost his footing, almost hauling Light out of the window with him; Light gave a little cry, feeling his knees give out as L's weight suddenly dragged on him, through he was able to brace them against the windowsill to anchor himself. One of his arms flailed out, gripping tightly around L's waist to ease the pressure on his collar, which was beginning to rip at the seam; he lifted the slender detective up a little, feeling him grip around his neck. Taking a breath, Light reached his other hand out and grasped the waistband of L's jeans, hauling backwards with all of his strength—

And eventually and suddenly managed to drag L in through the window and have them both collapse on the bedroom floor, L sprawled on top of Light and still clinging tightly around his neck.

They lay like that for a moment, wide-eyed and panting while the tightly coiled fear slowly unfurled and the panic drained slowly away; and then, once his sanity had built up enough momentum to function again, Light shoved L roughly off and sat up, getting to his feet so that he could slam the window shut.

"You saved me, Light-kun," L said, still folded up on the floor.

Light didn't answer him, resting his hot forehead against the icy glass of the window.

"Light-kun?" L got to his feet, moving over towards Light, who refused to look at him. "Thankyou for saving me."

"The chain probably would have saved you," Light said blankly against the windowpane, unable to process anything.

"Chain has no give. Falling at that speed from that height, it is more likely that it would have snapped." L touched Light's shoulder. "So you _did_ save me from falling."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Light asked flatly.

"Isn't saving someone's life something you _should_ feel good about?"

Without any kind of warning, vocal or otherwise, Light whirled and slammed L across the face with his open hand.

"How _dare_ you…" he hissed, so furious that he was near tears. "If you hadn't been on the fucking _windowsill_, I wouldn't have _needed_ to save you! Why do you keep _doing_ this to me? All these stupid, dangerous things, and then I think… _Kira_… and then you…"

"Light-kun…" L rubbed at his cheek which was already starting to glow a painful red, before reaching for Light again; but the teen recoiled angrily.

"Don't _touch_ me!" He spat, tugging furiously on the chain. Something had snapped within him, seeing L tumbled backwards, nearly out of his sight over the edge, and he couldn't pull himself back together quickly enough with L standing there trying to thank him. "Just get the fuck _away_ from me, Ryuzaki! Take this off _right now!_"

"I cannot do that, Light-kun."

"Why?" Light blazed. "Because I'm _Kira_? Would Kira have just _saved your life?!_"

"Possibly, if it was a benefit to them, which… it may have been to you."

Light stared at him, feeling the internal fracture twist further out of place.

"You are _unbelievable_…" He gave another furious wrench on the chain. "Take this _off_! Just get away from me, I don't want you anywhere _near_ me, I swear I'll go _crazy_…!"

"Light-kun, I'm sorry. I cannot. You know that."

"Fine!" Light snapped, tugging at his hair frustratedly. "Fine then! Have it your way!"

He grabbed up as much of the chain as he could in both hands and stormed out of the room, dragging L with him.

"Light-kun, where are we going?" L asked, not putting up any kind of protest at being dragged out of the bedroom.

Light didn't answer him, finally getting his to his destination; the bathroom. He opened the door and went in, tossing the majority of the chain that he held down on the tiled floor. He turned back, finding L right behind him, wide-eyed.

"Light-kun—" he started.

"Get out," Light interrupted coldly; he pushed L out of the bathroom and slammed the door shut, locking it and leaning against it with a deep breath that trembled through his whole body before finally gusting out of him.

The chain had gone underneath the door, and as such, although they were still only six feet apart, Light had managed to get away from L.

Maybe it was a little _Beauty and the Beast_; locking himself into a room where the creature imprisoning him was powerless to get at him – and maybe a tiled floor wasn't the most comfortable place to sleep.

L banged on the door, stuck on the other side.

"Light-kun!" He demanded. "Open this door right now!"

Light ignored him, curling up on the floor that bled coldness right through his thin shirt, with a folded hand-towel for a pillow; closing his eyes to the four mirrors standing guard in the room, like the ones he could see in L's horrible eyes.

Eventually, as he began to drift asleep again – uncomfortable as the bathroom floor was, he was exhausted beyond belief, shattered by the string of demanding events – he heard L's demands become merely forlorn cries of his name, and then become apologies for his thoughtless, cruel behavior, and though he couldn't tell whether or not L meant them, it was nice to know the bastard was on his knees out there.

It was nice to have the power for once; even if it was just one bite.

* * *

He woke up on the floor again; shivering again, too. His neck was stiff, drawing a dull throbbing pain from his head, and his entire muscular system seemed to have petrified itself into aching slabs, but still…

Best night's sleep he'd had in four nights – maybe more.

The chain was very still, and Light wondered if L had perhaps fallen asleep out in the corridor, locked outside. Certainly he was going to be a bitch all day because of this, and unfortunately for Light, it was L's turn to be on top tonight…

He sat up, stretching his twisted spine out, working a few kinks from his shoulders, and all the while trying to ignore the warm pasty sponge feeling in his mouth, like something of the dairy persuasion had crawled down his throat and died. He buttoned up his shirt, hoping L would allow him back to the bedroom for a change of clothes. This was yesterday's shirt, and, more importantly, the collar was torn due to L grabbing at it last night to stop himself from falling.

_Should have let him fall_, Light thought grouchily, getting to his feet.

Though he felt uneasy on thinking it, surrounded by those four mirrors – put in to stop him from stabbing L in the back.

Taken figuratively, however, Light couldn't see what difference four mirrors would make…

Light gave a little shake of his sore head. No, he hadn't meant that. L was infuriating, but Light wouldn't have truly wanted him to fall to his death. That was why he had grabbed hold of him, wasn't it? _Kira_ wanted to kill L, but Light wasn't Kira.

So he didn't want L to die. Simple mathematics.

Wondering if there were any painkillers for his pounding head around here, Light unlocked the bathroom door and cracked it a little, peeking out; opening it a little more when he found L sitting outside it, his back against the wall, a small array of items scattered around in an orbit on the floor beside him.

His cellphone, his laptop, a bowl of sugar cubes, a fork and an empty plate, cup and saucer.

Planet L had moved location, but apparently not been affected in its ability to function.

"Where'd you get all that stuff?" Light asked icily, looking down at him.

L glanced up at him through his thorny fringe of hair; and then daintily picked up his phone, holding it up.

"Watari." He plucked at his bottom lip with his thumb nail, his gaze never moving from Light. "I called him and he brought it for me."

Light gave a small snort.

"Doesn't he object to you treating him like a servant?" He muttered.

L wordlessly pushed himself up the wall until he came to his feet; the entire motion, coupled with his horrendous posture, making him look like a corpse dragged grudgingly from its grave.

"Object?" L repeated finally, once he was upright; he shot Light a filthy look.

In fact, his entire demeanor had become one of utter abhorrence; he was subtly looking Light up and down in a manner that was almost… _bitchy_. As though he was suddenly the high school cheerleader captain, glancing over a team tryout hopeful who was… _hopeless_, quite frankly.

(Incidentally, L wouldn't make a very good cheerleader, was Light's opinion; not only did he lack the general 'zest', he only had one letter to work with…)

"I do not treat Watari like a servant," L snapped finally.

"Yes you do," Light spat back. "You treat everyone like they're beneath you. No, _don't_ look at me like that, Ryuzaki. You really do."

"How so?" L breathed dangerously.

"You talk to Misa and Matsuda like they don't know _anything_, you lie to my father, you get Watari to do _everything_ for you… I mean, what _are_ you, some kind of… _princess_…?!"

L tilted his head, seeming amused; closing in on Light all the while.

"And _you_, Light-kun?"

"You _know_ how you treat me!" Light cried angrily, putting his hands on L's shoulders and pushing him firmly away again. "And I _hate_ it, Ryuzaki!"

"But I love you, Light-kun."

"_Then why do you torment me?_" Light burst out; he grabbed the front of L's shirt. "Tell me that, then! If you love me so, if I'm the only person you have _ever_ loved… why are you so fucking _cruel_?"

"I did not mean to frighten you last night." L looked blankly at the panting teenager before him. "And I did not mean to slip."

"It's not _just_ that!" Light blazed. "You _know_ that!"

"What is it, then?"

"_Everything_!" Light took a deep, shuddering breath. "You're so… _sadistic_! That first time you… and then, you were cheating at _Twenty-Ones_, and last night, and… _you're deliberately keeping me awake!_"

"No I'm not—"

"_Yes you are_!" Light twisted his grip more tightly on L's top. "You aren't letting me sleep, I don't know _why_, but you aren't."

L gave a small shrug.

"You _do_ sleep too much, Light-kun."

"Sleep-deprivation is a form of torture," Light hissed; he tugged at the chain. "As is being chained to _you_."

L said nothing; only gazed at Light with his dark-mirror eyes, his hands in his pockets. Perhaps he truly had nothing to say, had no excuse to give for his awful behavior, but his silence only angered Light even more.

"Well?" He snapped.

L only shrugged.

"What would you like me to say, Light-kun? If I deny it, you will only call me a liar."

"Well, you _would_ be lying!"

"Then why say anything at all?" L pulled his top loose from Light's fist and turned, beginning to walk away. "Come. You should get dressed."

Light trailed sullenly after him, too tired to argue with him any more. It was a cold October morning, and he had spent half the night asleep on a tiled bathroom floor dressed in only his underwear and a shirt – he was chilled to the core, quite frankly, and the thought of one of his sweaters against his skin was a pleasant one.

They entered the bedroom, at which, ignoring one another, they started in two different directions – Light towards the closet and L towards the window. The chain pulled taut, halting them both, and they both looked over their shoulder to gaze at one another.

"_Ryuzaki_," Light hissed warningly, "get the _hell_ away from there."

"I just want to look."

"And _I_ want to get dressed." Light slipped out one of his own under-used aces. "And the sooner I get dressed, the sooner we can go get to work."

L paused; then came away from the window, moving to stand behind Light as he went to the closet. The teenager could see him move behind him in the full-length mirror on the closet door, and sought the same reasoning as L – at least now he was certain to know if L tried anything.

_Oh, come on,_ he scorned himself blackly, opening the closet door. _L would never kill you. He's too busy thinking that __**you're**__ trying to kill __**him**_

Light pulled out stone-washed jeans, another clean white long-sleeved shirt and a black round-necked wool jumper, throwing them onto the bed behind him; and then found his vision obscured by a tie, which L had suddenly brandished in his face.

"I don't need that, thankyou, Ryuzaki," Light snapped, pushing it – and L – away; though it was tempting to take it, tie it into a noose and throttle L with it.

"You don't wear ties very often, Light-kun."

Light shot the detective a look; or, more accurately, shot his simple clothes a look.

"Hypocritical, don't you think, Ryuzaki?" He spat.

"It was only an observation, Light-kun. Please do not take offence." Still clutching the tie, L watched Light begin to unbutton the shirt he had slept in. "Can I help you?"

"Help me do _what_?" Light bit out.

"Take your shirt off."

"_Why_?"

"Because I don't want you to hate me."

Light shot him another exasperated glance; then sighed deeply, undid the last two buttons and let his arms fall to his sides.

"_Fine_…"

L came closer, putting his hands up on Light's shoulders and sliding the shirt off over them and down his arms; baring his shivering chest and back. L kissed softly, almost reverently, at Light's spine as the shirt crumpled to the bedroom floor.

"Please don't…" he whispered between kisses, "…hate me…"

"Hate you… for _what_? Last night…?"

"_This_." Without any kind of warning other than that single whispered word, L suddenly rammed Light in the back, shoving him to the bed.

And before Light could get his startled cry out, L was astride the small of his back, lashing his hands tightly together with the tie, being surprisingly fast and effective for normally having such a finicky grip.

"_Ryuzaki_…!" Light gasped as L hauled the final knot tight. "What… the hell are you…?!"

"Getting revenge." L slid off Light, allowing the boy to roll over; though his arms were tied tightly behind his back, being crushed into the mattress.

"For _what_?" Light cried. "Saving your _life_?"

"For locking me out."

"You _deserved_ it!"

L gave him a twisted little smile that didn't waver, growing stagnant on his face as he placed his hands on Light's shoulders and leaned over him.

"That doesn't mean I had to _like_ it."

Light glared up at him, his clear brown eyes piercing and icy.

"Have you _ever_ played fair in your entire _life_?!"

L gave a chilled little laugh.

"Light-kun, you do not get to be the world's three top-rated detectives by _playing fair_."

Light shifted uncomfortably on the bedsheets, pulling at the silk tie.

"Tell me then," he spat, "do you play bondage games with _all_ your suspects, Mr World's Three Top-Rated Detectives?"

L's rotten smirk only deepened.

"Ah, you're trying to unsettle me." He ran a cold finger down the center of Light's heaving chest. "Incidentally, you know that question is ridiculous. I was a virgin until you raped me, Light-kun. You should recall that."

Light flinched at the callous tone L's voice held – despite everything, L was still bitter at that first loss on his part, because Light had successfully overpowered him.

"Now, don't worry," L went on carelessly, trailing his slim hand down over Light's belly, lightly kneading the flesh along the way in seductive spider-tip caresses, and finally halting at the waistband of his boxers. "We have to make a prompt arrival at the investigation office, which disallows my 'revenge' on you to have a long life-span; and I suppose we had better not skip breakfast either. Frankly, Light-kun, you look as though you might collapse at any second if you do not have some coffee soon."

"And whose fault is _that_?" Light hissed, struggling with the tie confining his hands; he was too exhausted and too pissed off for this right now.

"I cannot be blamed for your weaknesses, Light-kun, but regardless, I am willing to make allowances for them. We will do this, and then have breakfast. We can't have you falling asleep at your computer again. Your father wasn't very pleased at all, if I remember."

Light gave a small growl of annoyance that turned into a choked hiss of mingled pleasure and frustration as L began to kiss at his bare chest and stomach. It felt good, which was why, for a brief, mind-dulled moment when his brain uncoiled from his skull and dangled somewhere near his groin, Light wondered why L considered this revenge.

And then he remembered once again that it was L's turn to be on top tonight – and that, right now, it wasn't night-time.

And that L had as good as _confessed_ that he was deliberately keeping Light awake, depriving him of sleep.

Basically, the completed jigsaw was that L was going to screw Light twice today, drug him up on coffee in between, and then probably torment him all night, leaving him a wreck.

"Why are you _doing_ this to me?" Light asked softly, his voice pleading even as his head was gently yet firmly tilted back.

"Light-kun," L breathed in reply against his throat, "I am a childish recluse. When did I _ever_ give you _any_ indication whatsoever that a relationship with me would be _easy_?"

"Why are you so cruel?" Light continued to ask, his voice still tinged with that dead tired plea, bordering on desperation as L leaned back and shifted his legs apart.

"I'm not, really. I only _seem_ cruel by regular standards because I have unconventional methods." One pale hand was stroking his face comfortingly; the other was down between his legs, sliding along the crease and circling his entrance.

"That's not an excuse."

"I never said it was." L thrust forward and entered him without warning, stifling Light's pained cry with the hand that suddenly clamped across the boy's mouth. "My love… seems cruel to you. What would… you prefer, Light-kun? Hugs and flowers…? You know… I'm not like that."

"I wouldn't… want you to be," Light gasped as L's hand shifted from his mouth to his shoulder, holding him down as he continued to move.

"But you don't want… me to be… like _this_ either." L gave a breathless little shake of his head. "I can't… change myself, Light-kun. Not even… for you…"

"People can change," Light panted through gritted teeth.

"Yes," L replied glazedly; he paused in his rhythm, looking down at the flushed brunette beneath him, breathing hard. "Yes, people… can change… I know they can… _change_…"

Light came against L's stomach with a breathy little cry, tossing his head against the pillow.

"That was quick," L observed lazily. "Has your exhaustion… made you more sensitive?"

"I think… I'm gonna pass out," Light groaned, struggling weakly against the tie again.

"Please wait… a moment more, Light-kun." L drove into him a few more times, making the shattered boy's breath hitch – and his orgasm made him squirm on the sheets. "There…"

L pulled out of him and slid away, righting his jeans.

"_Ryuzaki_…" Light moaned. "The tie…?"

"In a moment, Light-kun. Please be patient."

Light heaved a deep, tired breath and closed his eyes, almost falling asleep by the time L pulled the tie loose.

"Come on, Light-kun," L said, shaking him. "Let's go. Coffee will make you feel better."

"Getting away from _you_ would make me feel better, you bastard," Light hissed, struggling to sit upright; he shot a poisonous glance in L's direction. "Was that _necessary_?"

"I thought so."

"I didn't."

"Well, it's too late now." L shrugged. "So there."

"Morning wood again, huh?" Light sniped cattily, snatching up his fresh shirt from where he had thrown it before L had jumped him and tied him up like a whore.

"That's unkind, Light-kun."

"So was… _that!_" Light swiftly buttoned his shirt, not looking at L, and then pulled on his jumper.

"You said people can change," L said suddenly.

"That was just meaningless sex-talk."

"There's such a thing?"

"Of course. 'I love you' is the most common piece of sex-talk. Someone else's name is the second-most common."

"People _can_ change, though."

Light looked over his shoulder at L as he zipped up his jeans.

"I guess so."

"You seem like _you_ have changed, Light-kun. While you were in confinement—"

"Oh, don't start that again!" Light snapped, buttoning his jeans up and then reaching for his belt. "Of course I probably changed! I was locked up in solitary confinement for _fifty days_. It's lucky I didn't go _crazy_."

"Don't you think criminals can change?"

"I'm not a criminal, Ryuzaki."

"I wasn't talking about you, Light-kun." L blankly watched Light buckling his belt. "I mean criminals in general. Some can reform, perhaps through religion, or… well, it doesn't matter how. The point is, sometimes they can change. Become good people."

"Yeah." Light shrugged warily. "So what?"

"So isn't Kira wrong to kill them all? Perhaps Kira is inadvertently killing those who might see the error of their ways and reform themselves."

Light shrugged again.

"I suppose."

"But you have no definite answer?"

"Well… I don't think Kira is right, Ryuzaki. You know that. But… the Japanese justice system _does_ entail the death penalty for some serious crimes. A lot of the criminals Kira has killed were going to be executed anyway."

"So you think it's _right_ to kill criminals?"

"_No_!" Light blazed in frustration. "It was just a statement of fact; Japan has the death penalty."

"Yes," L said absently, tilting his head. "Which Kira will be awarded once I have caught them."

Light gave a small shiver.

"You always sound so… _happy_ when you say that," he said softly. "It's kind of sick, Ryuzaki."

"Happy?" L repeated. "Well, that would depend. If Kira _was_ you, Light-kun… I don't think I would be very happy at all."

"But you would still send me to my death."

"I would have no choice."

Light gave a small nod.

"Would you screw me one last time first?" He barbed bitterly. "Right before you handcuffed me and handed me over?"

"Light-kun…" L gazed at him silently for a moment or two. "…That's a terrible thing to say."

"That's because it's a terrible thing to do, and yet…" Light gave L another cold glance he stepped past him to the bedside cabinet. "…I really think you would do it."

L was silent for another short while; as Light snatched up his wallet from the bedside, and then crossed the floor again and picked up the shirt with the torn collar.

"You are angry at me," he said finally.

"Wow, you really _are_ the world's three top-rated detectives, aren't you?" Light snapped sarcastically; he started out of the room, pulling L after him. "Now come on, since you're the one going on about how much better coffee will make me feel…"

L didn't object to being dragged down the hall, lost in some melancholy train of thought spattered with percentages and probabilities; only surfacing from said thoughts when they reached the kitchen and Light began to rummage around in the cupboards for the coffee.

"Shall I make it, Light-kun?" He asked suddenly.

Light glanced at him, surprised at the offer. So now the princess was humbling himself – was Light going to have to start comparing him to _Cinderella_ now too? L _never_ made coffee.

"Sure." Stifling a yawn, Light sank into a seat at the kitchen table, placing his wallet and the shirt down on its surface – something he would deal with in a minute. Right now, it seemed more interesting to watch L make coffee, since it was such a rare event.

Five minutes later, when Light found that he had ended up doing it himself – angrily, tiredly banging down coffee cups while waiting for the water to boil – he understood _why_ L never made coffee.

"I was willing to make it, Light-kun," L sulked from his seat.

"I want it sometime this _century_, Ryuzaki!" Light snapped. "If you would just hold things properly, it wouldn't take a _quarter_ of the time, you know."

L blinked beguilingly at him.

"I was just trying to do something for you."

"Oh _no_," Light seethed, "do _not_ pull the guilt card on me, Ryuzaki. _You're_ the one who should be wallowing in a _pit_ of guilt."

"For doing what?"

Light gave a little cough, swiftly finishing up with the coffee.

"Oh, forget it," he snapped, banging down the coffee on the table. "Here."

"Two minutes and forty-seven seconds," L rattled off precisely. "Impressive, Light-kun."

"Shut up." Light sank exhaustedly into his seat again, sipping at his coffee before taking up his wallet and opening it.

"What are you doing?" L asked him, tilting his head; his eyes wide and child-like.

"Fixing my shirt." Light pulled out the tiny sewing kit zipped into one of the compartments of his wallet before putting it aside. "This is the _fourth_ one you've ruined. I'm running out."

"Why do you have a sewing kit in your wallet?"

Light shrugged.

"I could ask you why _you_ just happened to have handcuffs with a six-foot chain attached to them handy," he fired back, threading up a needle with white cotton thread.

"Necessity."

"Right," Light echoed, not looking at him. "Same here. Necessity."

L watched him neatly stitch his torn collar for a moment or two, his head on one side.

"You sew very well, Light-kun," he observed.

"It's not difficult."

L gave a blasé little nod, sliding his hand across the table and picking up Light's wallet; he opened it, looking through it curiously.

Photographs, cards, a few hundred yen…

Light looked up and saw him doing it.

"Ryuzaki!" He snapped indignantly, snatching it off him. "Don't go through my wallet!"

"Why not? What are you hiding?"

"Nothing, it's just… it's personal. It has all my cards in there and stuff."

"I wouldn't steal your cards, Light-kun."

"I know that, just… _don't_." Light put the wallet down next to him and returned to his sewing. "You shouldn't go snooping through people's personal stuff."

"I'm a _detective_, Light-kun." L sipped at his coffee briefly. "And incidentally, I noticed that you've sewn your wallet. There's a compartment sewn with slightly different colored thread. You obviously did it yourself."

"Because it was obviously _torn_," Light snapped. "Just like my shirt."

L didn't offer any kind of answer at all, and Light scowled.

"Why do you have to be so suspicious of _everything_ I do?" He asked irritably.

"Because you're a suspect."

"Well, you shouldn't be _sleeping_ with your suspect, you hypocrite," Light muttered blackly.

"I told you, Light-kun; I have unconventional methods."

"That is _no_ excuse!"

"You started it," L pointed out.

"And _you_ could have left it at that." Light tugged hard at a knot that had tied itself in his thread, pulling it loose. "You probably could have had me thrown in jail."

"We did discuss this. Such a course of action was not for the best."

"Though obviously _this_ is."

"Don't you prefer this?"

"I'm not talking to you, hypocrite." Light thereby clammed up, focusing intently on his neat stitching.

"That's childish, Light-kun."

Light flipped him off without missing a beat, at which L sighed deeply.

"As was _that_…"

Growing bored by Light's silence, L clawed the little sewing kit over to himself, beginning to go through that and wondering if he could make Light protest at his doing so. He pulled out all of the threads and needles, delicately lining them up on the table in front of him.

"Put those back, Ryuzaki," Light said testily, not looking up.

"I thought you had refrained from speaking to me, Light-kun."

Light looked up at him through his auburn hair, his eyes glinting.

"You're not giving me much of a choice and you know it," he snapped. "Now put them back. You're messing them up."

Seeming satisfied that he had coerced Light into communicating with him, L picked up the threads one by one and put them back into the kit; then did the same with the needles.

Light ignored him; until he heard him give a little hiss of pain, at which he jadedly looked up.

"What _now_?"

"I pricked my finger." L held out the finger in question, which was, sure enough, beading up a bright pearl of blood.

Light gave a frustrated sigh; bidden half by his bewilderment at the way L seemed to be able to constantly, uncannily invade his thoughts. Was this deliberate, or merely ironic? Sleeping Beauty, pricking her finger on the needle of a spinning wheel – or perhaps, in following the legend of Snow White, whereby the queen drew blood from her finger on her needle and, on seeing it spatter on the snow at her windowsill, wished for a daughter with lips red as blood, hair black as ebony and skin white as snow.

"Light-kun, _help_ me," L went on, suddenly sounding quite panicked; as the blood welled over and rolled down his finger, spattering onto his white top.

Blood on snow.

"For god's _sake_…!" Light banged down his shirt and came around the table. "This is what you get for playing with needles…"

He pulled off a sheet of paper towel, dabbing the blood away, ignoring the chilled feeling that was parading itself up and down his spine; L was simply sitting there, eyes and mouth slack, apparently in shock; like he didn't know how to deal with cutting himself.

"A band-aid will stop the bleeding," Light said, crumpling the bloodied paper towel in his hand. "Are there any here?"

L gave a small nod.

"Medicine cabinet," he said faintly; Light smacked him on the arm.

"Snap out of it," he spat. "You're acting like a _child_. Where is the medicine cabinet?"

"I'll show you." L got out of his seat, beginning to cross the kitchen floor, bleeding finger held out in front of him like a leading baton; then he paused, and looked forlornly at Light over his shoulder. "Will you put it on for me, Light-kun?"

Light massaged his aching forehead with his fingertips.

"Sure," he groaned. "Though I don't see why you can't do it yourself…"

"I don't know how," L replied as he started out of the kitchen again.

"What do you mean, you don't know _how_?"

"Watari always does it for me, if I cut myself."

"Then I'll show you how to do it yourself," Light snapped. "How _old_ are you?"

"Exactly twenty-four years, eleven months and thirteen days," L rattled off immediately.

Light shook his head tiredly.

"It was a figurative question, Ryuzaki." He paused. "It's almost your birthday, then."

"Yes. I'll be twenty-five on the thirty-first of October."

Light smirked.

"Halloween. _There's_ a coincidence."

_Considering you look like something that got lost on the way to the morgue…_

"Why do you say that?"

"Because you make my life _Hell_," Light snapped. "And by the way, twenty-five is too old to have someone tying your shoes and putting band-aids on for you."

"But I'm twenty-_four_, Light-kun."

"Oh, shut up. That's too old as well."

By the time L had led him to the medicine cabinet, located in a near-empty room that Light had never been into before, the detective had relocated his pricked finger to his mouth.

"Don't suck on it," Light snapped, pulling at L's wrist. "That won't help."

"That's not what you said last night."

Light glared meltingly at his knowing smirk, before turning away and beginning to go through the cabinet in search of band-aids. He located some, pulling the packet out – and finding behind it a box of…

…_sleeping pills…_

Thinking to reach for them, and then switching tactics, Light tore open the packet of band-aids and pulled one out.

"Here, give me your finger." He pulled the waxed backing off and stuck the band-aid on, wrapping the ends snugly around his finger; also noticing that L was watching him intently. "It's that simple."

L gave a small, silent nod; as Light looked up at the cupboard again, searching for headache pills. He found some and pulled them out, turning them over to read the back.

"Does your head hurt, Light-kun?" L asked him, plucking at the band-aid.

"Yeah. Do these work?"

L shrugged.

"I don't know. I never take medication. It causes my deductive ability to drop."

"Well, I'm going to try them." The brunette looked around, finding a sink on the wall a little way behind L. "Is there a glass or something around here?"

"There are plastic ones in the cabinet somewhere."

Light rummaged around again, finding the glasses – they were small clear plastic ones, individually wrapped in cellophane and stacked inside one another, like those found in a hotel room.

"Can you fill that with water for me?" Light asked, unwrapping one and handing it to L.

L took it silently, as though debating refusing; but then he seemed to remember the band-aid, and wandered five feet away to get the water.

As soon as his back was turned, Light swiftly reached up and silently grasped the slim box of sleeping pills, slipping them down into the pocket of his jeans and covering the slight bulge with his jumper. As L came back with the water, he popped two of the small red capsules from the packet of headache medication and put them in his palm.

"Thanks," he said, taking the cup of water; he brought his hand up to his mouth to knock the pills back, and was surprised when L suddenly grasped hold of his wrist.

"Don't take them, Light-kun."

"Why not?" Light snapped. "I suppose you _want_ me to be tired _and_ have a headache while we're trying to work?"

"No, I…" Still clutching his wrist, L looked away from him. "…I tampered with them."

"You _what_?"

"I… suspected that you might need them, so I tampered with them."

"When?"

"Last night. I had Watari bring them to me after you locked me out." And on noting that Light was still staring incredulously at him, continued; "Fatigue often leads to a headache. I noticed you rubbing your temples yesterday evening."

"So you _tampered_ with the headache pills?"

"Yes. I would advise you not to take them."

"And why are you suddenly warning me?" Light snapped.

"I feel bad." L held up his band-aided finger. "You were kind to me."

"But you'd have let me take them otherwise?"

"Probably, yes."

Light wordlessly shoved the box back into the cabinet, slamming it shut.

"Well, thanks a lot." Light threw the water into L's face. "I'm so glad I don't have to watch my back while I'm around you."

And on storming out of the room, dragging the dripping detective after him, wondered briefly if L had tampered with the sleeping pills as well.

* * *

_The blood was a token of his humanity – L seemed like such a monster, so unreal, so inhuman, so __**ugly**_

…_that sometimes it surprised Light to know that he was mortal, that he bled; and bled crimson just like everyone else._

_Just like him._

_Red like the skin of those apples that haunted him; or maybe a rose (or lips that shamed it)._

_A rose enchanted to be the ticking of a clock; beauty fading day by day, unless the one bound to it could earn the love of another before the last petal fell._

_And that other seemingly out of reach; prestigious, beautiful, with even a name to convey glory._

_Aurora meant 'dawn'. Belle meant 'beauty'. And Light meant 'radiance'._

_Could he then fall to this creature; this beast so concealed, so cruel, so difficult to love? Could he break this spell, or only condemn him to his death?_

_The answer should be as clear as blood on snow; or perhaps that last glimmering petal._

_Though it wasn't._

_Things were never so simple as "happy ever after"._

* * *

If _Snow White_ was to plague him, then Light decide to follow its teachings.

He didn't know if L had tampered with the sleeping drugs too; he hoped he hadn't, though if he _had_, it would serve him right.

Though Light was _counting_ on them having their regular effect, since he'd decided that L had had his fun for today. All Light wanted was a good night's sleep, to get his mind working properly again, and so that he didn't feel like L had thrown himself a "Bow-Down-and-Worship-the-Awesomeness-that-is-Ryuzaki™" parade, using Light's body as a designated walkway for the marching band and cheerleading squad.

He'd definitely lost that morning-after-sex afterglow now – he woke up every morning feeling like L had taken a chainsaw to both his skull and his ass; and, incidentally, feeling that he wouldn't be surprised if he awoke one night to find L routinely battering the rest of him with a brick.

So his plan for tonight? Drug him and knock him out. It was Sleep-the-whole-damn-night-through-without-tormenting-Light-kun Time for the insomniac bastard…

He'd noticed that L had taken to eating apples recently – maybe because of whole "Gods of Death love apples" thing, with the love and the apples and the Kira… _ness_…

Or maybe L had tagged onto the whole _Snow White _deal too, and was doing it solely to unnerve him. Maybe he'd even pricked his finger on _purpose_…

Either way, Light was going to go Wicked Queen on him, drug up a "love apple" with dissolved sleeping pills, watch the unsuspecting fool eat it, and then drag him to bed when he hit the floor, whereby he could chuck him on the mattress, get under the covers and forget all about him.

And L could lie there all night, playing Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or whatever; except no Prince Charming would be coming to awaken him, because Light had taken precautions and set up bear-traps…

He'd been working at it all day; having gotten the idea storming up to the investigation office on just learning that he had narrowly escaped being drugged on god-knows-what. Seethingly, he had briefly raged that didn't L _know_ how _dangerous_ it was to mix and tamper with drugs?

…And then reasoned that of _course_ L knew. Of _course_ Mr Genius Detective knew. Mr Genius Detective's problem wasn't that he didn't _know_.

Mr Genius Detective's problem was that he didn't _care_.

He could have ended up with some kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde version of Light on his hands, result of those spliced headache pills, and he probably would have just nodded and sipped at his tea and been satisfied in the knowledge that it was still his turn tonight – even if Hyde-Light _was_ smashing furniture, foaming at the mouth, and trying to kill him with a broken bottle.

On adding the last of the sleeping powder – sneakily removed from the interior of one of the four capsules he'd dissected – to the glass of water sat by his side, Light could only hope that _he_ didn't end up with some kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde L.

No, wait; that was ridiculous. L was as Jekyll-and-Hyde as they came _without_ the help of merged over-the-counter medication.

Well, it was a risk worth taking – if L did pull "Ryuzaki angry! Ryuzaki SMASH!" on him, at least he'd have an excuse to hit him with the copy of the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ inexplicably kept on the kitchen counter.

And for the record, Light didn't feel _remotely_ guilty about drugging him – L didn't play fair, so why should Light?

Was drugging L a Kira-like thing to do? Probably.

Was drugging L only to get a good night's sleep in (and also as a revenge tactic for cheating at cards, depriving Light of sleep, almost falling out of a window, trussing Light up with a tie to negotiate an 8:15am quickie as an alternative to a cold shower to get rid of that pesky morning wood, _and_ screwing about with the headache pills) a Kira-like thing to do?

No, it was the kind of thing any normal, sane person would do.

(Actually, any normal, sane person would probably have suffocated L with a pillow by now, then hacked up his corpse with a meat cleaver and buried the bits under this year's chrysanthemums, but Light, as a Kira suspect, couldn't afford that luxury.)

Well, L was Justice – and maybe that made him the fairest in the land, maybe not, but either way, he was about to get it.

The Wicked Queen was pissed off.

* * *

Recalling the original Grimm Brother's version of _Snow White_ – read by him once on a bored, sticky summer's day in a book of Japanese-translated fairytales that Sayu had in her room – rather than the old 1937 Disney film, Light was observant of the fact that Snow White had been suspicious of the disguised queen's gift of an apple.

The Wicked Queen had, fortunately, thought that far ahead – poisoning only half of the apple. And when Snow White was dubious of taking it, the queen had cut the apple in half and, knowing herself which part was the poisoned one, eaten the half free of poison. On seeing this and trusting it to be judgment of the apple, Snow White had eagerly taken the half the queen then offered and eaten it.

L rarely refused anything sweet that Light offered him – in fact, those pancakes from Matsuda's pizza place had been the only time he had ever refused food. Still, it was best to plan ahead, and on finishing his wicked concoction of dissolved sleeping drug, Light coated roughly only half of the apple's crimson flesh with it.

It was a slow process, since he could only do it one-handed, and to his side, where L couldn't see him; and when he finished "poisoning" the apple, he had to leave it aside so that it would dry, otherwise L would wonder why it was wet.

Incidentally, L seemed to be onto a new lead, since his attention barely wandered in Light's direction as they sat in the laptop-illuminated darkness of their front room. It was nearing eleven at night, and Light was tired; not just sleepy-tired, no; this was a head-drooping, lead-eyelids, dragging, soul-shattering _fatigue_. He was more than ready to put his plan into action, and the thoughts of the soft warm bed awaiting him could only be called blissful. He didn't know how long it would be before the drug would kick in, assuming his 'Poison Apple Plan' worked at all. He'd brought the apple in an hour ago from their last pilgrimage to the kitchen for coffee – L had brought triple-chocolate brownie ice cream.

No, he would make a _really bad_ cheerleader…

Stifling a yawn and clicking _Back_ on his browser bar, Light checked on the apple; cool, and… _dry_.

He'd made a little mark on the part that wasn't drugged; and picked up the apple now and sank his teeth into that mark, the sound crisp and harsh in the silence.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw L glance over at him, stirred by the sound; good, now he had his attention.

He took another bite, as though to assure L that there was nothing wrong with it. The detective watched him a moment more, then went back to his screen.

Swallowing both his mouthful and his smirk, Light leaned across, pushing the apple into L's field of vision.

"Love apple?" He asked softly.

L pushed it away.

"No thankyou, Light-kun."

_Damn it!_ Light blazed inwardly. _Does he sense…? No, okay, calm down… don't lose your cool…_

"Oh, come on," he said, pushing it back again. "It's a gift. I forgive you, okay? I've been mad at you all day, and I just… want to make up."

L paused, glancing at him again – his resolve wavering, or so Light hoped.

"It is _unlike_ you to be so forgiving, Light-kun," he said.

Light shrugged.

"Ryuzaki, we're too old to be squabbling like toddlers. I'm willing to make up if you are." He pushed the apple up close to L's mouth. "Come on. _Just one bite_…"

L gazed at him a moment more; then finally took the apple and bit into it.

_Poor, foolish princess_

Light made a point of not appearing too interested in him eating it, and slid away again back to his own screen; though a swift, sly glance back told him that Snow White over there didn't suspect him of 'poisoning' the treat at all.

And the Wicked Queen would sleep well tonight.

For approximately half an hour afterwards Light waited with bated breath to see if his little "spell" had worked, his tired eyes aching; and then allowed himself a triumphant smile when he finally saw, in the reflection of his monitor screen, L waver, rub at his forehead, and then slide to the floor.

Light waited a few moments more to be sure he was really asleep, before putting his computer into low-power mode and crawling over to his sleeping-spell princess.

He was asleep. He really _was_ asleep.

_Thank god,_ Light thought, getting a grip on L's slender form and lifting him up so that he could carry him to the bedroom.

The apple core fell from the detective's limp hand as Light got to his feet, hitting the carpet.

As he made the trek to the bedroom, L clutched to his chest, Light considered that, theoretically, he actually _could_ have _poisoned_ that apple; and now, for all his secretiveness and his suspicion and his different aliases and his damn chain…

L would be dead.

"You know," Light sighed tiredly as he placed L down on the mattress, making sure he was in a comfortable position, "I hope you never _do_ meet the real Kira, Ryuzaki…"

Stripping only to his shirt and boxers, Light slipped under the covers, and allowed his eyes the luxury of sliding closed and staying there; and sank beneath the star-deep sea of sleep… which, strangely enough, was _much_ easier to do without L whining in his ear about Misa and Matsuda and _Kira_.

_Yes, stay away from Kira, L; you're an easy kill._

* * *

Maybe it was just in following the tale of _Snow White_; but the "Wicked Queen's" plan did not run smoothly.

Within the tale, the queen looked in her mirror, expecting to declared the fairest after having Snow White dealt with, only to find that she still lived, and therefore outshone her beauty; in reality, Light felt himself jerked awake at around three in the morning, due to the fact that "Snow White" wasn't staying bewitched.

Rather, he was writhing around, panting and pulling on the chain.

"What… the _hell_…?" Light groaned exhaustedly, dragging himself up into a sitting position. "What is _with_ you? Even sleeping pills can't knock you out…!"

L didn't answer him; and Light rubbed sleepily at his brown hair, yawning.

"Well, quit it. I'm not playing tonight." He lay back again, closing his eyes and letting his arm fall across them. "Go to sleep."

He got only a minute's peace before L suddenly grabbed at him, giving a little groan.

"Will you _stop it_?!" Light blazed, sitting up again and smacking L away. "Get off me!"

And then he watched him writhing in the dark for a little while; before reaching across and flipping on the lamp, blazing gold across the bedroom. L didn't seem to react to the light suddenly flooding the room, only giving a few short, sharp pants. Light leaned over him with a frown, unsettled by his odd behavior.

"Hey, Ryuzaki…" He shook the detective a little. "Are you awake?"

L moved against his touch, but did not answer him – Light shook him again, concluding that he was actually still asleep.

So the "poison" _had_ worked…

But his sedated behavior…? He was breathing hard, writhing on the mattress, his skin slick with sweat. L _never_ behaved like this, not even in his rare lapses of sleep. He didn't seem to dream at all, and so…?

Light pressed a hand to L's forehead, noticing that he seemed to react to the touch even in his sleep – as though in pleasure.

He must have tampered with the sleeping pills too, was the only conclusion Light could come to; running the backs of his fingers down the side of L's sweat-slicked face, the teen gave a small sigh.

_Ryuzaki… what have you done to yourself…?_

He felt that L himself was the only one to blame for this, since although _he_ had fed him the drugs, had L not mixed them, the both of them would still be sound asleep, end of story.

He could feel how hot L's skin was, like he had his own personal internal furnace radiating unnatural warmth. Light thought it was probably best to try and wake him up; maybe if he drank something he'd cool down. Thinking drowsily that this was the absolute _last_ thing he wanted/needed, Light knelt and pulled L up under his arms, holding him up in the sitting position that he so detested.

"Hey, Ryuzaki," he hissed, taking the detective's shoulders and shaking him. "Wake up."

He'd anticipated that perhaps it would be troublesome to get him awake due to the sleeping drug, but L opened his eyes a little on being shook – the dark gleam of them narrow and filmy beneath barely-open lids.

"Light-kun…" he said breathlessly, his voice barely more than a whisper; and then he laid his head against Light's shoulder.

"You need water," Light told him. "Can you… come on; we'll go to the bathroom."

"No…" L shook his head; then lifted it, firstly kissing at Light's throat, then nuzzling against it. "Stay… here…"

"We can't." Light pushed him away. "And _this_ is why. This… isn't right. You shouldn't be acting like this."

"Stay here," L repeated softly; pulling right away from Light and sinking back to the mattress and pillow. His breathing was becoming shallower still and his eyes slid closed again.

"_Ryuzaki!_" Light demanded in exasperation; he was still exhausted and didn't want to deal with this. "You're dehydrated. You need _water_."

L's hand gripped at his own chest – closing around a handful of his white top and tugging at it.

"No water…"

His fingers moved, gripping over his heart, as though…

"Are you—?" Light cut himself off, reaching forward to place his hands over L's in a sudden panic. "Your heart…?"

"_Fine_," L sighed, placing his own other hand on top of Light's. "I feel… _alive_…"

Light bit his lip, feeling through L's ribs and skin and top and hand that his heart-rate had increased, so that it fluttered like a small, frantic caged bird inside his chest, a continuous thrumming instead of a steady singular beat. Though he then recalled that useless fact L had once relayed to him, about the increased heart rate of sexually-excited males…

"Ryuzaki, I drugged you," Light said pleadingly. "What did you mix the sleeping pills with?"

"Drugged…" was all L said in reply, "yes…"

"_Ryuzaki_!"

L didn't offer him anything else, only panting on the mattress – maybe beyond answering now. Well, whatever it was that he'd mixed, they seemed to be having an… _aphrodisiac_ effect on him now that the sleeping-part had worn through.

Light watched him in tired bewilderment; in a way, it was enticing to see L like this, because L _never_ behaved like this. He was either boredly consulting the ceiling or, in the reversed-roles variation, pounding Light dementedly into the mattress. He simply didn't _do_ sexy Take-Me-Now writhing on the bedsheets.

But Light was tired – the whole point of this exercise had been to knock L out so that he could get a decent night's sleep; and in addition, this was a result of taking mixed medication. Light didn't know what kind of effect this was ultimately going to have on him, since he had gone from being sound asleep to thrashing around within the space of about three hours.

And the Jekyll-and-Hyde L quip had seemed _so_ funny at the time…

He supposed, with a sigh, that the best person to call would be Watari, since L refused to even go to the bathroom to get a drink; and he was perfectly aware that Watari wasn't exactly president of the Light Yagami Appreciation Society, incidentally…

"Where's your phone, Ryuzaki?" Light asked jadedly; though he received no answer but a small whine, at which he resolved to just search L's pockets.

That resolution proved to be a mistake; apparently beyond speaking now, L gave a cry the moment Light touched him, arching upwards into his hands.

"Cut it _out_!" Light snapped. "I just want your phone…"

L grabbed at him, pulling him fiercely down on top of him, seeking a kiss and simply taking it when Light didn't react to being manhandled so. Too tired to fight, Light fell into it, overwhelmed by the sudden blazing lust that seemed to be radiating from L's form.

L plus lust, incidentally, was broken mathematics. It was as though all the suppressed sexuality that he had _never_ felt was having a revolution, tired of being neglected and using the drug effect as a porthole for escape to run rampant through L's body.

Their embrace was lazy, however, and Light broke away; rising up to his hands and knees above L. It was a matter of interest, experimentation – because Light had never seen L react in this way. Maybe it was all just fake, brought about by the drugs and nothing else, but Light was loathe to care for that as his libido cooked little popcorn sensations in his groin.

For this one single night, L was _different_. Untrue, certainly, but different – enchanted, shadows bleeding through the _light_.

For this one single night, L seemed… _human_. Mortal, with passion and blood and a beating heart to prove it.

Noting that L had parted his legs on the mattress to make room for Light, the teenager slipped into the space, leaning forwards over him to run his fingers down the side of his face, over his throat and down onto his chest. L gasped for breath at his touch, gritting his teeth – though Light was unsatisfied, and lifted the hem of L's top, pulling the whole thing off over his head.

The phone long forgotten, Light ran both spread hands over L's chest, starting at his collar bone and working down; pressing against his heart, feeling the flutter of it, and knowing then that he was alive, and human, and…

"_Memento mori_," Light found himself whispering.

L's eyes opened just a little, glinting like dark jewels in the lamp-light; or like mirrors…

"Remember… you are… mortal," he hissed in translation, his breath ragged.

"We are." Light's fingers trailed down lower; the whispered kiss of them over L's flat belly making him arch right up off the bed, and making Light drunk on the power of seduction. "Mortal, and… victim to mortal pleasures…"

His hands slipped down, moving over denim; sliding down to L's knees, then moving firmly back up the insides of his thighs, earning a soft moan of pleasure.

Yes, the moans were compliments, and that was why L never gave them. Maybe he thought indulging Light was spoiling him – if he moaned every time, perhaps Light would stop trying so hard to please him. At least this way he worked hard to make L cry out every time it was his turn…

_But finally, Ryuzaki… you're __**reacting**__ to me…_

He was getting them now, and they were delicious; stroking to the ego. Light's fingers twisted the button of L's jeans loose, pulling apart the zip like opening a book – then he paused, to unbutton his own shirt and slip it off.

Well, if nothing else, maybe this would put L back to sleep again…

But then, as he was about to resume where he had left off, L suddenly sat up, grasping at Light's shoulders and flipping him, so as to reverse their positions.

Jadedly, on finding himself on his back underneath the drugged-up L, Light suddenly seemed to remember how exhausted he was…

L slid down and lay against him, kicking off his jeans as he captured Light's mouth again. Light wrapped his arms around him, holding him tightly to him – skin pressed to skin, hot and sticky, the closeness tantalizing. It suddenly seemed _important_ that they be so close, as close as they _could_ be, so that the restrictions of detective and suspect could melt away like lines born merely of dreams…

The truth, and Light knew it, was that he was taking advantage of L's state and behavior – but he reasoned that L seemed to want this, and anyway, it was his own fault. If he hadn't mixed the drugs, he wouldn't be like this – and if he hadn't provoked Light at all, Light wouldn't have drugged him.

Regardless, this wanton, reactive Jekyll-and-Hyde L still seemed rather dominant in his nature; on flipping their positions and pinning Light down, and kissing him as though tormented by a terrible thirst, barely allowing the boy to breathe. Light had originally knocked him out partly so he _didn't_ have to put up with getting it in the ass tonight, and now everything seemed to still be sliding against his favor.

Besides, all he ever received for his own pains were that same blank expression, coupled with slightly-heavier breathing and the odd gasp or whine. All in all, L intentionally made Light's turns seem like a chore for both of them…

…But L wasn't himself tonight.

As though reading Light's mind, L broke the kiss, panting against Light's shoulder.

"Light-kun," he whispered, breath broken, "I want… to be… on top…"

"Okay." Light's fingers went to the back of his head, sinking into the tangle of wild ebony hair. "You can be… on top…"

L gave another breathless nod; sitting back on Light to get out of his underwear. His mind already ticking, Light watched him, noting that L still seemed half-asleep, as though he was merely in some kind of trance, or bewitched by some kind of…

…spell.

Light slipped out of his own shorts, smirking inwardly at this – L's state had left him half-awake and clumsy, compared to his usual sharpness. He was in no position to demand things and in no condition to fight for them.

Light's hands rested at L's waist as the detective dazedly positioned himself – and then, in one single, slick movement, Light hauled him forward as L had once done to him, arching himself upwards while simultaneously pulling him down, kebobbing him with the satisfying thrill of reversal, and stifling his surprised cry with a kiss.

L's eyes were still wide when Light broke the kiss, both of them panting at the rush of it all.

"Light-kun…!" He choked out. "I'm… supposed…"

"On top?" Light panted, smirking. "You… are."

He grasped L's shoulders, pushing him down the last few centimeters; making him arch his back with a gasp.

Exhausted with the effort of it, Light sank back onto the mattress – L straddling him the way he often did, though he was not the one in control this time, rather gasping in shock at the realization that Light had turned the tables on him, and at the feeling _of_ that turning-of-tables.

"Comfortable…?" Light panted, wiping at his forehead.

L shook his head slightly; his dark head dipped.

Light reached up, taking his elbows as though to brace him – and then sat up himself, pressing their foreheads together.

"You mixed… the sleeping pills… with an aphrodisiac… didn't you?" He breathed harshly, beginning to rock his hips upwards and drive himself into L.

L only panted, their faces infinitely close – but their lower bodies locked closer; he was riding Light, though the rhythm was slow and uncoordinated.

"Ryuzaki, I _need_… you to tell me!" Light panted; he kissed him, hard, as though he maybe expected to draw the answer itself from the drugged detective's lips.

"You meant it… for me," he went on, breaking the kiss, still speaking against L's mouth, "you thought… I'd get so desperate… I'd try and drug _myself_… so I could fall… asleep…"

L gave a drowsy nod, accompanied by a moan.

"_I_ was supposed… to end up like _this_…" Light groaned, touching L's hot face. "Your concoction… has backfired… on you…"

"_Yes_…" L tossed his head back with another deep moan, their rhythm deeper and more coordinated now. "Yes, _Light_…"

Light still had the strength to blink in surprise at L suddenly, out of nowhere, dropping the honorary from the end of his name; he had never, _ever_ done that before.

"Yes, Light… _Light_…" L leaned up against him, breathing hard, whispering his name over and over, and leaving the honorary off every time.

"My name…?"

"Don't… don't let me…" L grabbed at Light's face, gazing unseeingly into his eyes; L wasn't looking _at_ him, L was looking into him, or through him, because Light could see that L's own mirror-mirror eyes were glazed over.

The drugs, or…?

"Don't let you… _what_?" Light asked breathlessly.

"Don't… let me… _fall_… Light…" L kissed at his sweaty forehead. "Never let me… _fall_… because…"

"…Fall?" Light gasped out.

"…Because I… _love_ you…"

And in the trickling tide of pins and needles that followed the statement, Light knew _that __**had**_ to be the drugs talking; because L might truly feel it, but that wasn't what Light was debating. It was the _confession_ of it that Light simply couldn't swallow – whether meant in truth or simply meaningless sex-talk, _L_ uttering "I love you" was drug-induced and nothing more.

He was whole _galaxies_ apart from Misa, for whom "I love you, Light" was something of a catchphrase and mating-call intermingled. Maybe that was why, at least in part, Light had rejected Misa for L – not because he truly hated her, but because she was too easy to earn the love of. Her love was unconditional, no matter how much he shunned her or how cruel he was to her – but so many girls were like that. A kind word or two, a flash of the Light Yagami smile, and they fell at his feet.

But L… he wasn't taken in by that. Light's charm was wasted on him, and although at times it proved frustrating (especially when Light found himself unable to wangle his own way), he was sharp and intelligent and reveled when challenged. And L _was_ a challenge, wasn't he? Their relationship was nothing but an uphill battle, and at times, Light found that he would collapse, and almost forget what the hell it was he was even _fighting_ for.

So for L to say this… maybe they were his true feelings, maybe not, but he had not spoken his mind of his own volition.

Even now, there were certain cards that L kept close.

Puzzled still by his pleading for Light not to let him fall, the teenager kissed him.

"You know… I won't… I love you… too…"

"Yes, I… I have… _dreaded_ this…"

"Dreaded…?"

"Uhn… _love_, Light…" L's words were growing fainter, dissolving into soft moans. "Love… is _mortal_…"

"Is it…?"

"_Y-yes_…!"

"But you _are_… mortal, you… you are _human_, Ryu… Ryuzak…"

"And so shall die… a mortal's… _death_…"

L spoke no more thereafter, and Light had nothing to say to him either; chilled despite the hot friction between them. So sex was human – or mortal, at least. Sweat and body heat and pleasure…

…Surely there was nothing – but death – that served as such a strong reminder; sex indeed was memento mori.

_Yes, if nothing else… Remember you are mortal._

* * *

**RobinRocks: **Wow, an epic chapter… The longest yet, at 21 pages of Size 8 font (_Verdana_). Please don't attempt to sue us if it made your eyes bleed – we have a secret HQ in Malibu, so you'll never find us, mwa ha ha!

**Narroch: **And if you DO happen to find us, I simply request that you make the sticks sharp, and the rocks large.

**RobinRocks:** Anyway, notes on the chapter:

**One:** Shame on you if you didn't catch the significance of the watch and the wallet. _Shame_.

**Two: **This chapter actually contains a 'physical' embodiment of all three major Disney fairytale themes! Light locks himself in the bathroom a la Belle (in her room) in _Beauty and the Beast_; L pricks his finger on a needle a la Aurora in _Sleeping Beauty_; and L eats a "poisoned" apple a la Snow White in _Snow White and the Seven Dwarves._ If nothing else, kids, we certainly drive our themes and motifs home hard…

In other fun news, I discovered the joy of embedding a poll in my profile! The question? Naturally, one demanding an answer to the LightxL/LxLight debate! Incidentally, the scales are tipped decidedly in L's favor at the moment (him as seme, that is to say) – if you don't agree, go vote for Light! Everyone, please take a moment to vote; I'm really interested in seeing who wins, since the fact that you read _Poison Apple_ doesn't actually indicate anything about your personal preferences, because it contains both variations of the pairing. _And_, if you do, you can find some other treats on my profile, namely links to the official _**L: Change the WorLd**_ website (with a trailer for the movie), a YouTube clip of _**Sleeping Beauty: Once Upon a Dream**_ **in JAPANESE** (highly appropriate, and linked up because I originally wrote Light as having seen a subtitled version of the movie because I didn't think they had ever bothered to translate it!) AND **a **_**Death Note **_**personality test**! I was Light… O.o Not that I find that dreadfully surprising, in all fairness… And Narroch was Rem; so between us, we killed L. Go team! Anyway, if you do it, let us know who you came out as!

**Narroch: **And as always, thankyou ALL for supporting this story so much! You guys rock our faces off!

- RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx

P.S: In response to the "magic" issue last chapter, in reference to the fact that L and Light managed to get their clothes off without removing the chain… Well, let's just say that it just DIDN'T SEEM IMPORTANT. Why plough through a whole damn paragraph about how they unlocked the cuffs and got out of their clothes and put them back on? What difference does it make? Soooooo… unrealistic as it was, we just ignored it. Let's face it, Ohba and Obata themselves kind of ignored how impractical a six-foot chain between two people is too…

Besides, this is a Disney-themed fic! Magic all the way, biznatches!


	9. Tragic Magic

Quite a quick update this time, kids! Yay!

Ladies and gentlemen, you are looking at the last-but-one chapter of the first act of _Poison Apple_, '_Fairietayle'_.

First off, some "announcements":

One: Thanks for voting on the poll, guys! Unfortunately, if you voted for Light (as seme), I regret to tell you that L is wiping the floor with him. :D

Two: The character test! Quite a lot of you told us who you came out as, so now, including myself and Narroch, we have an L, a Light, a Near, two Rems, two Wataris, a Naomi Misora, and a Misa/Mello/Matsuda/Sayu combination. We should have our own RP, peeps – we have half the cast. Heh heh.

Thankyou to all who reviewed: **Macvanaly, Phoenix of Hell, dlazuli, DoYouFindMeDreadful, yaoi-is-agirl's-best-friend, Nocens, Dawn-at-Midnight, Inu Yokai 911, Accidental Affinity, Yaoihentaiqueen, Mask of Mirage, Tanka, Li the Twilight Knight, L'Animalerie, Elegant Arrow64, Mihael-Kun, Kiyoiyuki, DarkDragon34, previously-recorded, Bloodshot Eyes, Rainbowness, Nyantea, Oztan, Jenna, Itallia, Sister Salsa, Lara, Sophabelle, Jyrenze, Ali, Silent Dagger, In-Love-With-LxLight, Liadan, Year-of-the-dragon **and** Stargirl7**!

Eternal gratitude for you: AND a brand new chapter. Which is also extremely long. O.o

**Apples: **Something random. Liadan pointed out in her (anon) review that the concept of a "love apple" can be applicable to an Irish legend, whereby sharing the fruit between two people is a symbol of 'bonding and eternal love'. I did not know that, but how appropriate! Apples are a fascinating fruit, incidentally, when it comes to folklore, and we have been drawing on some of those legends (aside from the screamingly obvious _Snow White_ thing). Apples represent sin (Biblical), beauty (Greek mythology), and there was a phase sometime around the sixteenth/seventeenth century where apples, in art, conveyed a homosexual relationship between men (perhaps likened from the 'sin' allusion). There is actually a painting called _Two Young Men_ by Crispin van den Broeck, from around 1590, in which one of them is holding an apple, and modern interpreters have viewed this as a sexual innuendo.

Heh heh, what _were_ Ohba and Obata thinking…?

_Listen to the wind blow,_

_Watch the sun rise;_

_Break the silence,_

_Damn your love, damn your lies._

_And if you don't love me now, you will never love me again;_

_I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain._

_**The Chain; **_**Fleetwood Mac**

Tragic Magic

For all their genius, and plotting, and haughty elitist secrecy, irony still had its own intelligence-defying way of nuzzling into their affair and pointing out the obvious to the most _oblivious_. And it was a double shot of said irony once pointed out, because the one doing the pointing was _so _oblivious, no-one would believe him; even when he truly did figure out the Big Secret. Like the foolish boy who prophesied doom on the flocks everyday and because of this was duly disregarded when a big bad wolf really did lope onto the scene. In the same way, for one who spouted the most head-shaking, mind-boggling, _torrent_ of ridiculous statements everyday, it was only subtly ironic (and blatantly exasperating) instead of revelatory when he sounded off his latest hair-brained theory.

"I think they're sleeping together," Matsuda announced suddenly, on stopping halfway down the street with Mogi while Aizawa stooped to retie his renegade shoelace.

In the following silence which sent the statement spiraling into the abyss of absurdity, Mogi didn't react but for a small glance in Matsuda's direction; Aizawa blinked and looked up at him.

"_What?_" The single deriding word finally broke the awkward molasses-thick silence with the full shooting-down effect Aizawa had mastered.

"Light and Ryuzaki." Matsuda paused a little, before drawing himself up to his full height as a feeble attempt to defend his claim. "I think they're—"

"Sleeping together, yes, I heard you say it," Aizawa interrupted wearily, straightening again. "Firstly, Matsuda, define "sleeping together". Because, being _chained_ together, I would imagine that they have to—"

"No, I mean…" Matsuda trailed off, pouting, as they got walking again, already leaving him behind to argue with their backs. "You _know_ what I mean."

Mogi gave a small, silent nod; but Aizawa merely rolled his eyes.

"Okay, Matsuda… _why_?"

"They… they just… they're so… so…"

"Chained together?" Aizawa finished wryly without having to look back to see the floundering expression so commonly found on Matsuda's face.

"Yes. I mean, no! _No_." Matsuda twisted his hands together. "They just seem so… _secretive_ with each other… Haven't you noticed the way they keep… glancing at each other, or… well, Ryuzaki, he… totally _ignores_ everyone else now, like Light's the only person in the room…"

"Well…" Aizawa scratched his hair. "They're _friends_, aren't they? And, well… I guess they're both certified geniuses, so it's only natural that they'd be… close. You know, they can probably relate to one another very well. Besides, they're closer in age than any of the rest of us are."

"But…" Matsuda scrabbled for ammunition to back up his argument. "Ryuzaki, he… he _touches_ Light a lot. Haven't you noticed?"

"What do you mean, he _touches_ him?"

"When they're talking, he… I dunno, puts his hand on Light's shoulder or his arm or whatever, or… I've seen him touch his hair, too."

"Ryuzaki communicates like that," Aizawa sighed. "Some people do. Haven't you noticed that he fidgets with things? Whatever's on the desk in front of him… and I guess, if _Light_ happens to be the thing in front of him…"

"But Light doesn't _object_!"

Aizawa shrugged noncommittally.

"Maybe he doesn't mind." He finally took the effort to glance over his shoulder and shoot another wry look at Matsuda. "It doesn't mean they're… uh, _sleeping together_."

"They disappear together all the time!"

"Of course they do – they're _chained together_."

"But…" Matsuda's voice became a little quieter. "…It's no secret that Light isn't interested in Misa-Misa. You've seen how he pushes her away. He's always far more interested in whatever Ryuzaki has to say."

"That's because Ryuzaki has a _brain_," Aizawa snapped, reasoning firmly to steer the conversation away from Matsuda's dear Misa-Misa. "Look, all I can gather is that Light likes his own space—"

"Then why haven't the handcuffs driven him round the bend by now?!"

"Well, it's a different situation with Ryuzaki. I guess Light puts up with it because it's the only way to prove his own innocence. Amane, well… she just clings to him."

"But—" Matsuda started vainly.

"Look," Aizawa interrupted impatiently, "Matsuda, I can see where you might have drawn your conclusion from, but it's a ridiculous conclusion to have come to. Light might not be overly enamored with Amane, but there's evidence enough that he has had girlfriends in the past, and _Ryuzaki_…? Come _on_, Matsuda." Aizawa was even smiling now at the ludicrous thought. "He barely has any _feelings_, let alone _hormones_. It'd be like trying to have a relationship with a _brick wall_."

"Well…" Matsuda rubbed at the back of his head, apparently lost for words. "It's… it's not just—"

"Here we are," Aizawa interrupted cheerily, tossing the whole conversation carelessly over his shoulder; he had stopped outside a small all-night sake bar. "This place is great. Just one round?"

Mogi gave a solemn smile and nod, and followed Aizawa into the bar.

Matsuda sighed and followed them; thinking he had filled his fool quota for the day and it would be better to just drop the matter entirely, and not mention that, every time Light and Ryuzaki returned from one of their "disappearing-together-because-they-were-chained-together" excursions, they always seemed to have a faint musky smell of arousal clinging to them. It was just the barest of scents, but Matsuda, one to literally follow his nose, had caught it more than once:

The undeniable aftersmell of sex.

* * *

Light awoke with the first _aurora_ slivers of dawn, a mere hinting of sunlight beneath the horizon, barely enough to tinge out the stars that still specked the opposite end of the sky. He was on his back, warm and comfortable beneath the sheets, and with a hairstyle straight out of _The Rocky Horror Show_.

He could hear L's low voice, talking very quickly and quietly; but he wasn't addressing Light, and, moreover, he was speaking in English. Light was very good at English, but he wasn't exactly fluent in practical conversation, and L was talking so fast he couldn't understand what he was saying, the rapid stream of words flowing in a foreign torrent right beneath his early-morning comprehension skills.

Light looked across to his left, propping himself up on his elbows, to find L sitting up in bed, curled up against the headboard; dressed in his white top and boxers, and talking a mile a minute into his cell phone.

The drugs had worn off, apparently.

Light frowned; L hadn't noticed him, and his tone sounded very annoyed, as though he was on the verge of shouting at the person on the other end of the line. It took a short while of listening intently before Light caught "Watari" thrown in with the speedy English exchange, and wondered why L seemed so angry with him.

L seemed rude to Watari sometimes, behaving the way he did; but he never seemed to get _annoyed_ with him.

Ah, there; Light could hear him saying "No" a lot now, which was a word he obviously understood; and then he caught his own name, minus the Japanese honorary.

_He's talking about me…?_

Light suddenly got the feeling that, since L hadn't noticed that he was awake, he should probably pretend that he hadn't heard any of this conversation, and slowly slid back down to the pillow, closing his eyes.

Eventually, he heard L finally snap "Goodbye, Watari" and hang up the phone, throwing it frustratedly across the covers; and suspected that the conversation had ended badly, probably with L simply interrupting Watari and hanging up on him.

Light sincerely hoped that L's bad mood wasn't going to victimize him too – he suspected that the detective was going to be furious with him anyway, given the whole "Poison Apple" thing, and he really couldn't deal with acting as a substitute Watari too…

He kept his eyes tightly closed as he felt L's presence suddenly lean over him; but his plan was foiled only moments later.

"I know you're awake, Light-kun."

Seeing no point in continuing with the act, Light opened his brown eyes; noting the ease with which L had reverted back to Japanese, honoraries and all.

"You knew, huh…?"

"I saw you wake up." L tilted his head. "Do you feel awkward now?"

"A little." Light put a hand to his forehead. "I, uh… heard some of your conversation. I'm sorry."

"I see."

"But I didn't understand most of it," Light continued hurriedly.

"It's alright." L gave a small sigh. "It doesn't matter whether you understood it or not. It was nothing important."

"You… English is… your first language?"

"Is it obvious?"

"Well, I… I placed first in English at school, but… I couldn't understand anything you were saying."

"No, that is comprehensible. Well, I prefer to converse with Watari in English, if it's just the two of us. We are both more comfortable with it."

_That conversation didn't sound at __**all**__ comfortable,_ Light thought, but he said nothing.

L offered nothing more either, and, to Light's surprise, got back under the covers with him.

"Uh, are you… alright?" Light couldn't help but ask, when L actually went so far as to snuggle up against him.

"Yes. Why do you ask?"

"Because, um… I thought you'd be… _mad_."

"I see." L wrapped his arms around Light's neck – the teen was still naked beneath the sheets. "Well, I suppose I _should_ be, given that you tricked me into taking a sleeping drug, then took advantage of me… but, since _I_ was planning on doing exactly the same thing to _you_, it has occurred to me that my fury has no warranty whatsoever. All I can take from the events of last night is that the skillful way in which you outsmarted me could lend to the conclusion that you are Kira."

"If I was Kira, wouldn't I have _killed_ you last night?"

"Not necessarily, but it _has_ occurred to me."

Light gave a small shake of his head.

"Ryuzaki, your Kira theories are just getting weirder and weirder…"

L gave another deep sigh, shifting himself right on top of Light, resting his head on the boy's chest.

"Are you _sure_ you're okay?" Light pressed.

"Yes. I am certain." L's dark eyes glinted up at him. "One hundred per cent."

He lifted his head a little.

"Why? Do I seem… _different_?"

Light didn't answer him for a long time – no, it was not L who seemed different, nor indeed did Light feel any different himself, it was just that…

The _atmosphere_ seemed different – _something_ somewhere between them had changed since last night and it made the following morning feel charged with unspoken opportunity. He felt the warmth of L – so corpse-like, and yet so undeniably _alive_ – sprawled across his own body; felt the beating of their hearts merged together, a soft symphony of _memento mori_ itself; and remembered his kiss, and his promise.

Holding the dark-haired detective to him – a man, seven years older than him, and yet who suddenly seemed like a child; and, the apparency of even the sex itself forgotten, vowing to never let him fall.

Ah, yes, that was what it must have been, then; last night, it was not pure sex, nor untainted lust.

Last night, for the first time, they had not had sex; they had made love.

"No." Light said it to the ceiling, a half-smile of acknowledgment playing at the corner of his mouth. "No. You're fine, Ryuzaki. You're okay."

"Am I?" L did not take his gaze off Light. "_Are we_?"

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Nothing." L finally dipped his head again, pressing his mouth to the hot skin of Light's bare chest. "It means nothing."

"Don't," Light said flatly, when the detective began to lick him.

"Why?"

"Because I'm not ice cream."

"Hm." L tilted his head, looking hard at Light's chest. "_That_ might be fun, Light-kun."

"Get off, pervert," Light ordered, pushing him away; noting inwardly that the "kun" had been firmly stapled back on to the end of his name.

He wondered exactly how much of last night L could remember; it obviously wasn't a blank to him, but he had been high on mixed aphrodisiac and sleeping drugs…

"Memento mori," Light said suddenly, toying with a strand of L's ebony hair; which pulled from his fingers when L lifted his head again.

"Why would you say that, Light-kun?"

"You remember, then?"

"That I'm… mortal?"

"No." Light gave a small shake of his head. "That I said it."

"Of course." L rested his head back on Light's chest. "Last night, you said, when…"

"Yeah." Light's fingers tangled in the web of silky ebony. "I know."

As though in response to the entanglement of Light's fingers in his hair, L shifted himself back on top of the boy, sliding his legs down and entwining them with his – so that they were intertwined tightly together, the bond stronger still than the chain that still redundantly threaded between their wrists.

Light tried to set aside his bewilderment at L's sudden clinginess; but then, L was the world's three top-rated detectives. He must have noticed that there was a sudden air of "true lover's ease" between them too, and maybe he was intoxicated by it.

Just because L _didn't_ show emotion didn't mean he _couldn't_.

And then, just as Light was drawing forth this conclusion, L gave a sudden small laugh, his mouth vibrating mirth against Light's shoulder.

"Ah, Light-kun… would you think it terribly lazy of me to express a wish not to get up today?"

"No, but… I'd think you were ill, or at least that someone had replaced the real L with a replica."

_Not that I'm totally adverse to staying in bed and having sex all day…_

"Hm. Perhaps that last suggestion is not so strange. There could be other Ls…"

"Right, but there's only one. One who… doesn't want to get up. Which is strange, for _you_."

"I…" L trailed off, lowering his voice, and pausing to choose his words, seemingly. "I just want to… stay here, like… _this_."

"Half-naked?"

"You fail to see my point." L shifted his head on Light's chest to get more comfortable. "Consider that, right now… regardless of whether you truly _are_ Kira or not… Kira is not between us. I wish that were the case all of the time…"

"But… that doesn't… You want to drop the Kira case?" Light asked incredulously.

"No. I… wish that I had simply dealt with it already. It's so terribly depressing, don't you think?"

"I… I see…" Light blinked a few times. "You want to be… with me, without the tie of Kira between us…"

"Yes. But… I believe that—"

"But once we've _caught_ Kira, Ryuzaki—!"

"Ah, now, don't make reckless promises, Light-kun," L chided him drolly. "We cannot be certain of anything at all. According to my suspicion, the loss of Kira to this equation could also mean the loss of _you_. Then I would have nothing at all. "

"Then why—?"

"_That_ is why, Light-kun. Do you see? If only we could suspend this moment, when, to be honest… none of it really _matters_… Are you Kira? Are you innocent? At the moment, when I have no evidence of either, it is meaningless. Here, together… _this_ is where we can exist detached from everything that is going to tear us apart…"

L closed his eyes, though continued to speak;

"We may each lie in the arms of our nemesis, and yet… right now, we can feel _safe_." He ran his cool fingertips over Light's chest. "You _do_ see, don't you, Light-kun? Please tell me you do."

"Yeah." Light wrapped his arms around L, so that they were fully and tightly embraced. "Yeah, I see…"

"This is our… _Heaven_, then, Light-kun?"

Light gave a little snort of laughter.

"Would you call it that?" He asked.

Light felt L shrug in his arms.

"I don't know. I have never seen… Heaven."

"Neither have I." Light rested his chin in the crown of L's head. "I've never died."

"Ah, yes…" L let out a deep breath. "…Light-kun?"

"Yeah?"

"I… would you…? It is merely a hypothetical question, of course, but… I did wonder… if…?"

"If what?"

"If, hypothetically speaking… you would allow me to die in your arms…"

Light gave a tiny, unnerved, and strangely equine laugh.

"That seems a little… _Romeo and Juliet_, Ryuzaki…"

"Melodramatic?"

"A little."

"Hm." L seemed to consider that for a moment. "But _would_ you?"

"Uh, well… if I happened to _be_ there, I guess so, but… I'd probably be busy trying to call you an ambulance, you know."

"What if there was no time? What if there was no way of saving me?"

"You mean… like _Kira_?"

"I mean anything. Anything at all. I just want to know."

"Of course, if… if that's what you'd like."

L spent another moment or two considering that.

"Yes, Light-kun," he said finally. "I think… if I had to die, that I would like that."

"I'd rather you didn't die at all, you know."

"Me too, but… _memento mori_, Light-kun." L raised his head and kissed Light's cheek. "Never forget."

"Ryuzaki… _why_ do you talk about death so much?" Light asked wearily. "It's kind of depressing."

"We're dealing with _Kira_, Light-kun," L replied, sounding a little surprised. "The title itself even comes from the English "killer". I think myself – indeed, _all_ of us – lucky to still be alive."

"Then… why don't you live more for _today_, then? Instead of moping about how we might all die…"

"How would you suggest I do that, Light-kun?"

Light gave a shrug, absently petting L's wild ebony hair.

"I don't know. Do something… _fun_, I suppose. Something you enjoy."

"Do you have any suggestions?"

Light shot him an odd look.

"No. We don't enjoy the same kinds of things, Ryuzaki."

L's eyes glinted.

"Oh, I think I would disagree, Light-kun…" Apparently taken with a sudden notion for "living for today", the detective untangled himself from Light and slid downwards, disappearing beneath the covers.

"_Now_ what are you doing?" Light asked wearily, lifting the blanket a little to look for him – but it was too dark under there, and it was more comical to watch from above the blanket as the roving L-shaped bump wriggled its way down.

He hoped L wasn't going to play about with his feet, because truthfully, Light didn't really like having his feet touched; he wasn't ticklish, exactly, but he found it irritating to have someone fooling about with them, and always fought to suppress a shudder and a desire to pull them away when L started stroking them or, maddeningly worse, licking at his toes.

"Ryuzaki, don't even _think_ about touching my— _uhn!_" Light cut himself off with a small, startled cry, as his muscles flip-flopped, jerking him back against the mattress. L's hot mouth had descended on something _quite_ a bit more sensitive than his feet. "_Ryuzaki_… _god_, you… you…!"

He arched his back, grasping upwards at the headboard with a pleasured groan as L's talented mouth coaxed his arousal to fullness; though he knew, through it all, that this display meant that L was back in charge again, the miracle drugs of last night completely worn away.

And, stunned with pleasure so early in the morning, Light at least found it easy to follow his _own_ advice – it was exceedingly difficult to think about death – Kira, or Kira's victims, or _dying_ at all – when L's every breath or lick or movement of his head sent striking stardust coursing through his veins, and made him feel so wonderfully, blissfully, utterly _alive—_

Yes, it was hard to remember you were mortal when, drenched in gold, you felt as though you were in Heaven.

Breathing deeply, his gasps interspersed with soft moans of delight, Light nuzzled his face against his own shoulder, at this moment wondering how he could ever find it within him to despise L, and at this moment feeling that it really would be okay by him if the handcuffs _never_ came off, and at this moment knowing why Misa, beauteous as she was, could just never compare to L, freakish as he was—

On the bedside table, as though right on cue, Light's cell phone vibrated and began to ring.

Blindly, Light reached for it, grasping it and bringing it to his face – L mustn't have heard it, completely submerged beneath the covers and nestled between Light's legs, for his ministrations upon the teen did not falter in the slightest. Light looked first at the time on the display – 6:04am – and then at the caller ID.

_Misa Amane._

At first, on clocking the irony of it, Light thought wildly to ignore it; and then wondered why Misa would call him at this time of the morning. What if it was urgent? What if she had hurt herself and was calling for him to come and help her, or—?

By the time Light had made up his mind, any normal person would have given up and rung off – but Misa was doggedly persistent, and it kept on ringing in Light's hand as he grudgingly reached under the covers to pull at L's hair.

"Ryuzaki…" he panted, pushing the covers back, to reveal L, still crouched dutifully over his groin. "Stop for… a moment… Misa is calling me…"

L lifted his head, his expression unreadable; his gaze moving to the lit-up phone. He watched Light give a nod and flip it open to answer it—

And then reached up and snatched it out of his hand, holding it up to his own ear in his usual peculiar fashion.

"Good morning, Misa-san," he said before Misa could speak and Light could protest, his tone innocent and patronizing all at once.

"Ryuzaki?" Misa asked, sounding bewildered. "Why are you answering Light's phone?"

"I happened to pick it up," L lied casually.

"I want to talk to Light," Misa demanded.

"You can't," L replied, his tone emotionless.

"Why not?!"

"He is busy. Goodbye, Misa-san." L took the phone from his ear, hearing Misa protesting shrilly over the line, and was about to hang up on her when Light grabbed his phone back.

"_Give me that!_" He hissed, taking it to his own ear. "Hi, Misa."

"Light!" Misa cried blissfully; jumping up the decibels so piercingly that Light jerked the phone away from his ear and even L acknowledged it with a tilt of his head.

"Yeah. What's wrong?" Light asked, pushing L away; the detective had leaned forward and was beginning to run his tongue down the center of Light's still-heaving chest.

"Do you know _J-Chic_?" Misa gabbled excitedly.

"It's a Japanese fashion magazine, right?" Light asked jadedly, bored with this conversation already; L was apparently bored of it as well, for he had begun to slither away downwards again.

"Oh, Light!" Misa squealed. "It's not _a_ Japanese fashion magazine – it's _the_ Japanese fashion magazine!"

"Oh. Okay." Light covered the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand for a moment, noticing that L was back between his legs and apparently ready to start over where he had left off. "_Ryuzaki_. _Don't_."

He uncovered the phone again, ignoring L's baleful glance at it, just in time to hear Misa saying – her voice even higher and giddier than usual – that she was going to be the November edition of _J-Chic_'s cover girl.

"Matsu just called and told me!" Misa cried happily. "Isn't that great, Light?! Matsu is _such_ a good manager!"

"Oh. Yes." Light looked up at the ceiling. "That's really great, Mis—_ah_!"

Surprise, surprise; L had taken advantage of Light's averted attention and returned his _own_ attention to his previous engagement, and the boy couldn't help but cry out at the sudden pleasurable onslaught.

"Light!" Misa cried, noting the shocked rise at the end of her name. "Are you okay?!"

"Y-yes…" Light panted, trying weakly to writhe away from L – though his attempts were extremely half-hearted. "I'm sorry… Ryuzaki…! _Stop_ it!"

"Ryuzaki?" Misa repeated demandingly. "What's that pervert doing _now_, Light?"

_Wouldn't __**you**__ like to know_…

"Nothing, he's… he's fine…" Light struggled to keep the moan and the betraying breathlessness out of his voice. "He's not… not doing anything…"

L was apparently incensed by that, his actions seemingly being unappreciated despite it being a cover-up on Light's part; for he dragged his teeth up along the underside of Light's hard length, making him jerk and cry out again.

"Light!" Misa squealed a third time. "Is he hurting you?"

"No… we're… we're just…" Through his bewildered haze of pleasure and desperate biting-back of moans, Light floundered desperately for a plausible excuse; anyone with half a brain could probably have figured out that L was pleasuring the younger investigator in some kind of way, but Light was exceedingly grateful right now for Misa's obliviousness. He supposed it wasn't just Misa's intelligence – indeed, Misa had it in her to be deviously smart when she _really_ wanted something; it was that Misa deliberately blinded herself to things about Light that she didn't want to see or know.

Misa didn't want to think that Light was "cheating" on her with that freaky weirdo of a detective; and so, despite the moans, and the agonized protests of L's fake name, the thought that that was the conclusion never crossed her mind.

"We're…" An outlandish, ridiculous excuse came sauntering into Light's mind; and seeing no other, more plausible intelligent reasons, he threw it out there, hardly able to think straight. "We're playing… _Battleships_, Misa. Ryu… Ryuzaki keeps sinking… my ships…"

He heard even L give an incredulous snort, and felt it vibrate right down into him.

"_Ohh_," Misa whined, "can I come down and play too, Light? I can help you win!"

"Uh, M-Misa… I…" Light suddenly convulsed and grit his teeth, giving a half-stifled cry as he reached his peak and spilled over.

"_Please_?" Misa wheedled desperately. "Did he just beat you again? I can help you!"

Light only panted, unable to speak, barely listening to Misa jabbering over the line; instead dazedly watching L kneel back, wiping off his mouth on his sleeve.

Without missing a beat, L reached out and once again took the phone from Light's hand.

"I'm sorry, Misa-san," he said, his smirk thankfully invisible to her. "This is only a two-player game."

"Ryuzaki!" Misa seethed. "Stop being such a meanie to my poor Light!"

L only smiled.

"Is he yours, Misa-san?"

"Of _course_ he's mine!" Misa blazed, indignation visible even over the phone. "He's my _boyfriend_!"

"Oh? Do you hear this?" L held up the chain to the mouthpiece and rattled it loudly for her to hear.

"Stop taunting… her…" Light gasped, snatching the phone back a second time. "Misa, I have… to go. That's… really great… about the _J-Chic_… thing…"

"Can we go on a date today, Light?" Misa pleaded.

"Maybe… I'll see… how busy we are…" Light said, not interested at all in any of this.

"Yay!" Misa paused, then lowered her voice. "…Do you _have_ to bring Ryuzaki?"

"Misa… he's _chained_… to me…"

Misa snorted; just as Light suddenly found his mouth dominated by L's, who was leaning upwards – the teen could taste himself flavoring the kiss, and pressed upwards into the dewy warmth, forgetting about Misa.

L took the phone a third and final time from Light's now-slack hand, and spoke to the pretty young model on the other end of it on breaking the kiss with her "boyfriend";

"Goodbye, Misa-san."

He hung up on her and switched the phone off, tossing it behind him onto the bedsheets to join his own discarded phone.

"I hope you don't mind," he said quietly between swift, chaste kisses at Light's mouth. "I just want everyone to leave us alone."

Light gave a groan.

"I can't _believe_ what you just did…" He massaged his forehead with his fingertips. "_Why_ you couldn't have just waited…"

"I am living for today, Light-kun." L blinked. "Wasn't it fun?"

"Well, yeah, it _felt_ good—"

"It _tasted_ good."

"Don't lie. You only like sweet things," Light pointed out, pulling a face.

"I will make an exception here and there."

"Uh huh." Light rolled his eyes. "She's right, you know. You _are_ a pervert."

"Very well, then," L replied stiffly. "Shall we do something normal?"

"Like what?"

"Get up and get dressed, Light-kun. I will show you."

"Oh, _god_, Ryuzaki… It's _way_ too early…" Light groaned; it was far from pleasured this time.

"I know. That is the point, Light-kun."

"I don't understand."

"You will. Please get up."

Light looked at him long and hard; before finally sighing and grudgingly getting out of bed and fishing about for his clothes. L only had to find his jeans and pull them on, which took all of four seconds; Light was much slower, pulling on two layers against the nipping coldness of the October morning.

"Where are we going?" He asked, making his way around the foot of the bed to join L on the other side of it.

"To live for today, Light-kun," L explained, "and embrace life, and go up to the roof and watch the sunrise."

"Oh." Taken aback, Light couldn't help but give a small smile. "Okay, that… that sounds _nice_…"

"Yes, I believe it will be." L gave a nod and began to leave the room, Light close at his heels.

Though, when his own phone began to ring again, buried somewhere beneath the bedsheets, L actually paused, and turned back; apparently debating for a moment or two, before going back to the bed and scrabbling around under the covers for it.

He pulled the phone out and held it up between his thumb and forefinger to examine the caller ID.

Even from where he was standing, over five feet away, Light could see that it read _Watari_.

His expression completely deadpan, L threw the phone at the wall.

* * *

_Aurora _was glorious; radiating waves of pure gold with a dappling of orange and wispy pink across the cityscape of Tokyo, and making the mirrored windows of skyscrapers and glass rooftops of office blocks glint and flash like Oscar night jewels. It was a true vision of man's modern ability – of technological prowess and brilliance, Tokyo being the utmost utopia of tomorrow's science, made all the more sublime by the glorious backdrop nature had provided.

There was a chilled dawn wind blowing, especially this high up; though it was refreshing and crisp rather than unpleasant, touching their hair with whispered October kisses, and whisking away their clouds of visible breath.

"So what's _with_ the helicopters again?" Light asked, looking across at L.

The detective shrugged.

"Perhaps we will need them," was his only answer. "And perhaps not."

He was walking away even as he spoke, and Light had no choice but to follow him over to the very edge of the roof, which was secured with a barrier.

Light placed his hands on it, watching L lean down a little and fold his arms on the surface of it, then rest his chin on his arms.

And there was a bout of comfortable silence between them for a while; accompanied by nothing other than the whisper of the wind at their hair and the gold of the rising sun on their faces.

"I like Japan," L said finally, not particularly addressing Light.

"Oh. Yeah. You… grew up in Britain, right? In England?"

L gave a slow nod.

"Yes. Winchester."

"Is it nice there?"

L shrugged.

"I suppose. It is very _different_ to Japan. It rains a lot."

"Do you miss it?"

"Sometimes."

L glanced at Light before standing up straight again – or as straight as he usually stood – though Light found himself more intrigued by the way in which L seemed to suddenly be very open. He wasn't guarding his every word, or shooting Light suspicious glances every time he asked a question.

Well… that was _good_, wasn't it? Surely it proved that L trusted him a lot more than ever before – it meant that, via their sexual relationship, Light had managed to earn L's faith. Becoming so close, and engaging in acts of love and lust between the two of them, had taught them about each other.

Light did truly trust L now, he confessed. God, he was annoying and irritating and childish and sometimes Light wanted to whack him with a computer monitor (or drug him with sleeping pills), but, knowing that he couldn't _possibly_ be Kira, Light would trust L with his _life_.

It was doubtful that L had the same confidence in Light, given that they were still chained together, if nothing else – but he _did_ seem far more trusting, as though he felt that he no longer needed to watch his back for imminent danger.

_God, if I __**was**__ Kira, it would be so easy to kill him now that he's let his guard down…_

Light blinked; that conviction had just appeared in his head of its own accord, without any kind of input from his own conscious thought process. He shivered a little (though perhaps it was only from the wind?); it was true, but he didn't want to be thinking like that…!

_Kira_ thought like that; and he, Light Yagami, wasn't Kira.

He took a breath, closing his eyes; a little shaken by that silent statement that had so strongly flashed in his mind…

"Light-kun?" He heard L ask. "Are you alright?"

Light opened his eyes and smiled a little and nodded.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just… admiring the view, I guess."

L tilted his head.

"Yes. It is wonderful." His dark eyes slid towards the gold-glinting city sprawled below again. "There is a lot of power down there, Light-kun."

Light's brown eyes blinked again.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the same can be said for any big city." A spike of ebony hair blew across L's left eye – and Light was quick to reach out and brush it away again, though no words were exchanged between them at the action. "Society is built up, layer upon layer. Bottom-feeders, those who scrabble to scrape together a living; those who work hard, yet stay in the same social position their whole lives; those who come from nothing, and against all the odds, make something of themselves; those who are born into money and power, and stay within it for the entirety of their lifetime. Consider the unemployed man, the working man and the rich man; consider the drug dealer, the office worker and the corporate boss. It's all power, hand over hand, or like…"

L trailed off, holding up his wrist.

"…Links in a chain," Light finished quietly. "Right. But…?"

"What is the relevance?" L supplied for him in turn, a small smile gracing his bloodless lips. "Power is a drug, Light-kun. Compare the corporate boss, then, to the unemployed man, perhaps made redundant through no fault of his own; on lining them up side by side, any outsider would look at them and declare the corporate boss the better of the two, due to his financial success and power. And perhaps, in a society such as this, driven by greed and desire, that would not be argued with. But, to ask a _scientist_… a biologist, perhaps – or maybe a doctor… Such an individual would conclude that, irregardless of the financial prowess and power of either man, both are, by and large, identical in their genus-specific components. That is, to say, they are both human."

Light nodded, still rather bewildered – he understood every word of what L was saying, being virtually identical in intellect to him, but the reason for this observation was still something of a mystery to him.

L seemed to know this, however, for he gave a rare smile.

"Ah, my logic still escapes you, Light-kun. To put it more simply, then; the corporate boss is deemed the more worthy man, due to his power, even if he is as human as the man he stands next to. The conclusion? Power elevates people above humanity; or, at least, leads them to _believe_ that they have been elevated."

"You're… talking about Kira."

"Not exclusively, but yes, I believe Kira can be included in the outcome of such an equation." L glanced at Light again. "Don't you agree?"

"Of course. Kira thinks himself a _god_." Light gave a nod. "That much is certain."

"Well, I was considering that, if we were to base an investigation on the premise that "Kira's power can be passed from person to person", what you once said to me could prove to have an interesting effect."

"And what did I once say to you?"

"That you supposed that Kira – or the first Kira, anyway – is, or was, an "affluent child". That is, someone with childish tendencies, and so therefore most likely someone young; perhaps mid-teens to mid-twenties. Furthermore, you added that the type of criminals killed would point towards someone young – someone with no interest in any kind of financial gain. An adult, as I recall you elaborated, would no doubt kill those from whom they would benefit from, were they to die. Since that was not the case with the killings carried out by the first and second Kiras, we can assume that they were both young, and, most probably, not in a position of any real financial or commercial power. And when you consider that the ability to deal death – _however_ Kira kills – must surely be a power in itself, no doubt instigating a god-like tendency within the individual… well, it makes me wonder how much damage a power like _that_ would create if coupled with some kind of high societal power."

Light nodded.

"Yeah, that _is_ interesting…" He looked at the dark-haired detective. "But since there doesn't seem to be any evidence _of_ that kind of combination…"

"Oh, no. I do not think it is an actuality. At present, anyway; despite the fact that the killings have continued." L tilted his head. "Though incidentally, a more corporate Kira would be undoubtedly much easier to catch."

"What makes you think that?"

"Because I think we would be safe in assuming that _money_ would be the key component in any of that Kira's executions; and money, especially dirty money, is notorious for leaving a trail, Light-kun."

Light nodded again; and then felt another small shiver shimmy through him.

"Are you cold?" L asked.

"A little," Light admitted, "but it's okay. I don't want to go inside." He shot at glance at L. "Aren't _you_ cold? You aren't wearing any shoes. Or socks."

L shrugged.

"It is superficial."

"Uh huh."

Light looked out again over Tokyo; the sun had risen higher during their talk of power and money and Kira, so that the gold was almost blinding. It _was_ breathtaking, and the teen was glad that L had suggested this, even though "watching the sunrise" seemed a little too romantic in taste for the detective – given that his idea of a "romantic rendezvous" was to drag Light into an empty box closet on the fourteenth floor and screw him until he could neither walk nor see straight.

("You lack stamina, Light-kun," L would comment witheringly on dragging Light back down the hall towards the investigation office, the boy half-stumbling after him, the chain pulling.)

And despite the fact that this time yesterday he'd been plotting against him, planning to knock him out by way of a drugged apple, Light felt a sudden hot rush of love for L; for the detective so convinced of his guilt as a mass murderer he had chained himself to him, and for the man so infuriating he drove Light all the way around the bend, so far that he ended up right back where he had been originally standing.

Light saw L's maddening tendencies, and raised him an "I-love-you-anyway"; and, his gaze still fixated on the glimmering, gold-cast city, reached down for his hand.

The brushing of Light's fingers against the back of his hand made L jump and jerk his hand away; Light looked down then, and made more of an effort, grabbing at him and closing his fingers around L's.

L looked at him, wordless; and Light gave him a sort of half-smile. Still looking at him, expressionless, L twisted his hand free, then readjusted its position and placed his palm against Light's.

Their fingers tightly interlocked.

They still didn't say anything; and after a moment, even looked away from one another, gazing hotly at the city of gold sprawling outwards as far as the eye could see – as though suddenly shy of one another.

Though there was nothing shy about the fierce way in which they gripped one another's hands; and Light could feel the band-aid on L's finger still in place.

The handcuffs clinked against one another a little, and the chain lay forgotten between them, trailing on the surface of the roof; unbroken, but suddenly unneeded.

"L."

"Yes?"

L answered with a question, though he did not glance at Light, and noted that that boy had not addressed him as 'Ryuzaki'; and also that the utterance of "L" itself had not been a question.

"I love you," Light said, finally looking at him.

"Yes," L said again, finally glancing at him; gazing solely at Light's clear brown eyes. "I believe you."

Three words for three words – L did not return the "I love you" gesture, but his own utterance seemed to convey such a meaning, because Light was chained to this man because this man thought him to be a liar.

"I believe you", coming from L, meant far _more_ than "I love you" ever could.

Light only smiled; and his smile was _aurora_.

Far off, and deeply distant, church bells began to chime, their resonating tri-chorded sound wrapping the moment in perfection.

So they stood in silence, but for the bells – detective and suspect; lover and lover; and hand-in-hand – and watched the sun rise, aglow with endless promise.

_Blinded by the light._

* * *

"_What's wrong, Watari? It isn't like you to call this early."_

"_Forgive me, Ryuzaki. It's just… that is, I…"_

"_**What**__, Watari?"_

"…_Where are you?"_

"_In bed."_

"_You slept…?"_

"_A little, yes."_

"_Oh. That… that's good. You __**do**__ need to sleep, you know. Depriving yourself is bad for your health."_

"_Yes, so you keep saying. Is that the only reason you called?"_

"_I… Ryuzaki, I… I know you don't like me meddling in your personal affairs, or the way you choose to eat or sleep and whatnot, but, out of concern, and I hope you will not be offended by my asking… Where is the boy?"_

"_Light?"_

"_What other boy would I mean?"_

"_He's asleep, Watari."_

"_Is he in the bed with you?"_

"_Of course he is. He's chained to my __**wrist**__, as you will no doubt recall."_

"_Ryuzaki… I think we are both deliberately evading the point here."_

"_You have __**failed**__ to make a point thus far, Watari."_

"_Very well, then; I shall procrastinate no further concerning such a matter. You are engaging in intercourse with him, aren't you?"_

"_Not at this precise moment, no."_

"_Ryuzaki…"_

"_Well, you weren't specific."_

"_You are involved in an ongoing sexual relationship, constituting penetrative intercourse, with Light Yagami – the boy you suspect of being the first Kira. Is that, or is it not, correct?"_

"_That is correct, Watari."_

"_I see. May I ask, Ryuzaki… __**why**_

"_Because I want to, Watari. I like him. I think I may even love him. I know that must seem strange to you, given that I have never expressed any kind of interest in any form of sexuality or sexual practice before, but—"_

"_Ryuzaki, I think you are being very silly and irresponsible."_

"_Why? I have never felt these things before, Watari – is it wrong to act on them? I am human, after all."_

"_Yes, it is as I feared."_

"_As you feared? That maybe one day I would find someone that I could love?"_

"_No, it isn't that. It is not that I wish to deny you happiness, Ryuzaki, but… You know this relationship is wrong."_

"_Yes, I do."_

"_Then why do you continue with it?"_

"_Because I like it. I like to kiss him, Watari; and I like to have sexual intercourse with him. I know, I know… those are all the things I have scorned my whole life. I know why you see this as strange, for me to be behaving this way—"_

"_**Ryuzaki**__… it isn't that. I am glad that you have finally started to explore your sexuality. It isn't normal for it to be suppressed and ignored – humans are sexual creatures. But… this __**boy**__… there are so many reasons why you should immediately terminate your little affair with him."_

"_Please list them, Watari; for I am sure I will disagree with all of them."_

"_Very well, then; he is the same gender as you, he is much younger than you, he is the son of Deputy-Director Yagami, a valued member of the investigation team, and, most importantly, he is a __**suspect**__ – and the only reason he is a suspect is because __**you**__ suspect him." _

"_Firstly, Watari, I admit I am surprised at your mentioning his gender as a stigma. Does it matter to you if I am – as I appear to be, it must be said – a homosexual?"_

"_Of course it doesn't, but I… Ryuzaki, I do not think that __**he**__ is a homosexual. All those girlfriends—"_

"_I would take this opportunity to remind you that it was __**he**__ who started the physical side of this relationship."_

"_Ryuzaki, I am sorry to say this, because I do not like to defend Light for what he did to you that day, but I feel that you may have unintentionally manipulated him into that situation. He is a teenage boy, with naturally unbalanced hormones – and you have __**chained**__ him to yourself. And furthermore, on this note, do you think it healthy for a relationship to be born of __**rape**_

"_Light was punished for what he did to me, make no mistake, Watari. I dealt with him myself."_

"_Very well, but that aside… Ryuzaki, his age…? He is barely of the legal age requirement."_

"_He is eighteen, Watari; and frankly, I do not think I am wrong in concluding that he was in fact no longer a virgin by the time he turned eighteen. Rather the ladies' man, as you said yourself."_

"_Regardless, Ryuzaki, he is eighteen, and you are almost twenty-five. He is a teenager and you are an adult. If anyone were to find out, it would not be unreasonable for them to suppose that you are coercing him into a relationship designed to fulfill only your own sexual desires."_

"_That is far from the truth, Watari. One of the reasons I like and respect Light so much __**is**__ his maturity – it doesn't seem as though he is seven years younger than me."_

"_But he __**is**__, Ryuzaki. You were seven when he was born – when he was thirteen, you were already twenty. His father… good lord, Ryuzaki – his father would __**kill**__ you."_

"_If Light loves me and I love him, than I do not see why Mr Yagami should have the right to be so angry. Surely he wants his son to be happy?"_

"_Ryuzaki, a child's choices can be hard for a parent to accept. I do not doubt that Light is willing, and I accept that you may wish to pursue a relationship that is homosexual in nature, but… I am not your father. I love you, Ryuzaki, as any parent would love his child – but I am not blinded by parental expectations. I know that you are an autonomous adult; but to Light's parents, he is still their child. And I very much doubt that either of Light's parents want him to become involved in a relationship with a male detective seven years older than him."_

"_That is merely social stigma, Watari, bred into people. Light would be no different a person than he is if he were sexually involved with Ms Amane instead of me."_

"_Well, you and I know that, Ryuzaki, but…"_

"_Watari, Light and I are very careful. Nobody is ever going to find out. We are both too clever for that – we never leave evidence."_

"_And doesn't that make you think that he would also excel at covering himself up, if he was Kira?"_

"_Of course. There are a great many things he does that make me think that he could be Kira."_

"_Then __**why**__ are you sleeping with him? Ryuzaki, have you lost your mind…? This is biggest factor of all – if you think he's Kira, then you should __**not**__ love him."_

"_I know, but I can't help it. He is the most beautiful and most fascinating person I have ever met. I tried to ignore my attraction to him at first, but now that we are so close to each other, every moment of the day… I can't __**help**__ it, Watari."_

"_But Ryuzaki… I don't think you are trying particularly hard __**to**__ help it…"_

"_Watari—"_

"_No, listen to me, Ryuzaki. I am growing extremely concerned about you. I do not think you have realized yourself, but this relationship with Light is changing you. I believe that you __**are**__ falling in love with him – and Ryuzaki, that is extremely dangerous, if you believe that there is even a sliver of a chance that he is Kira. Love is the most blinding of all emotions – I can see it. You're starting to look for Kira less and less in Light, because you no longer want to believe that he __**is**__ Kira."_

"_Oh, I see. You believe that I have become incompetent as a detective."_

"_I believe you have become incompetent at detecting whether or not Light Yagami is Kira. Has it not occurred to you that perhaps, if he __**is**__ lying and pretending that he isn't Kira – as you believe – this is merely a plot of his? To forge a relationship between you so that you will eventually stop suspecting him, because your love for him disables you to see the flaws in him?"_

"_I have considered that, Watari, thankyou very much. I have considered every eventuality, and every outcome."_

"_And you're __**still**__ taking the boy to your bed?"_

"_Well, aside from the fact that there is a possibility that, if he __**is**__ Kira, he will confess to it during intercourse… His actual __**being**__ Kira, if that is the truth, has no effect on the sex whatsoever. L could still have sexual intercourse with Kira – it wouldn't change anything. And if I have no evidence for either his guilt or his innocence, why not indulge ourselves?"_

"_Ryuzaki, you are utterly __**deluding**__ yourself—" _

"_I don't recall ever asking you for your opinion anyway, Watari."_

"_Ryuzaki… I'm worried about you. You're playing an extremely dangerous game – and it would be dangerous even if Light __**wasn't**__ a Kira suspect." _

"_And it is nice to know that you care, but I'd appreciate it if you would mind your own business."_

"_You aren't going to stop, are you?"_

"_No."_

"_And you aren't going to listen."_

"_No."_

"_Well… I never thought I would ever have to say this to you, Ryuzaki, but… you're being an idiot."_

"_I don't care what you think, Watari."_

"_I didn't say that I __**think**__ you're being an idiot. I said that you __**are**__ being an idiot."_

"…_This conversation is over, Watari. I will continue with my relationship with Light, and there is nothing you can do to stop me."_

"_Ryuzaki, I'm only saying this because I—"_

"_Goodbye, Watari."_

"_Ryuzak—"_

* * *

October became something of a blur; and L's observation concerning the notion of Kira gaining corporate power suddenly became an extremely ironic factor – such, in fact, that it made Light wonder if L had perhaps even known about Yotsuba Group beforehand.

It seemed an impossibility, incidentally; but the first time Light had stumbled on those escalated share figures concerning Yotsuba's stock, he hadn't been able to suppress a displaced little glance in L's direction, wondering if he could possibly know how right he apparently seemed to be…

He'd splayed out his findings to the detective, while said detective gripped tightly at his shoulder and leaned so far off his chair that he was practically in Light's _lap_; and while Matsuda whined in the background about how much he had helped, and was ignored.

On that note, in an attempt to make himself noticed more and scorned less, Matsuda sneaked into Yotsuba's offices while acting as Misa's manager, ditching the model while she filmed for Nishinaka's newest movie (with, ironically, none other than Ryuga Hideki the First as her leading man) and almost getting himself killed, and escaping certain death only by an elaborate drama involving pretending to drunkenly fall head first from a fifteenth-floor balcony.

Meanwhile, those less idiotic than Matsuda were decidedly more productive with their time; Watari was able to confirm that Yotsuba Group was indeed responsible for the recent deaths, due to their hiring of Eraldo Coil to uncover L's identity; and thus L himself revealed that he apparently had some kind of triple-personality, resulting from the fact that he was L, Coil and Deneuve all in one go ("Have you ever even _been_ to France?" Misa had bitched at a later date, on hearing that third title); whilst the police had completely pulled out of the Kira investigation, forcing those on the task force to quit the NPA – though Aizawa stormed out after effectively having a tantrum about how much he loathed Ryuzaki.

Light had found himself a little taken aback by the sudden appearances of Aiber and Wedy in their midst; oh yes, he understood perfectly _why_ L had brought them in, a professional conman and a slick thief, but…

He couldn't help but wonder why, since L seemed to know perfectly well that they _were_ criminals – even introducing them as such – the almighty genius detective hadn't chucked the pair of them in jail by now. If L was such a respected "good guy", why was he hanging around with these types of people?

_But then again, why is he sleeping with someone he believes to be a mass murderer…?_

Still, Light had nodded his pretty head in agreement, and watched as Aiber skillfully took on the role of Eraldo Coil; feeding Yotsuba slivers of information on L's instructions, while extorting both information and extremely unfair amounts of money at the same time.

Light noted that L seemed to be content to sit back and merely move the pawns around concerning all of this; tossing out instructions to Aiber and Wedy and Watari between sips at his tea. Incidentally, all these leads – leads that, for once, pointed at someone else rather than _him_ – had quite the opposite effect on Light, and made him active and determined. He committed every scrap of information to his brilliant mind and scrambled it over and over, snapping as many pieces as he possibly could together – and then, on coming to a few conclusions of his own, based on his investigating, slammed them down in front of L triumphantly.

Indeed, it had been _Light_ who had indicted that Kira could kill in ways other than heart attacks.

And, furthermore, Light – under the pretence of being L – who had snagged Namikawa and dragged him unwillingly to their side – using him as a pipeline for information exchanged between "L", "Coil" and "Kira".

Then there was Misa. No closer to discovering which of the seven members participating in the secret meetings (only seven after Hatori 'mysteriously' met with a sticky end), L had devised a plan designed to force Kira out into the open, Aiber's "Coil" showing himself to the group to meet with Misa – on consideration for a commercial – and "investigate" her, making sure that all present came to the conclusion that she had once been apprehended as the second Kira – the one possessing the power to kill with only a face.

Incidentally, Misa had jumped the gun a little, but in doing so, secured a cell phone recording of none other than Higuchi confessing to her that he was Kira. L seemed unsatisfied, and while the rest of the team grew steadily more annoyed with his apparent morbid fixation with the killing method, it was determined via a further conversation with Namikawa – with whom Mido and Shimura had apparently sided – that Higuchi was indeed Kira.

("Why are you so annoyed that Misa was right?" Light had asked L that night, the detective sprawled in his arms after their 'nightly activities'.

"Because Amane-san is decidedly unintelligent, Light-kun."

"Oh, give her a break…")

Regardless, it came down to this – with no room for doubt concerning Higuchi's guilt, and with Misa possibly in danger, the task force had had no choice but to formulate a plan and put it into action. It was no good just slamming down on Higuchi – springing out of nowhere like the crew of some TV show that specialized in filming the crew springing out of nowhere at people right when they were least expecting it, telling them they'd won a trip to Hawaii or five years' supply of BBQ-glazed snack crackers or, hey, that they were fucking _busted_ for being Kira, man!

No, that was no good – they needed evidence, and they needed to know how Kira killed. And so Matsuda was brought forth and martyred again – 'resurrected' from the dead and suddenly, magically, on Sakura TV for three hours, full of how he was going to reveal to the world Kira's true identity – engineered, of course, to make the largely unintelligent Higuchi panic and play right into the hands of those about to catch him.

And right now, it was going perfectly to plan; highly alarmed, Higuchi was desperately trying to reach Misa whilst tearing across half of Tokyo looking for a – _any_ – source of Matsuda's true name, now that it had become apparent to him that "Taro Matsui" was not it.

Light couldn't help but glance at L, the way he often did, noting that his face was utterly expressionless as he gazed at the monitors, on which the events were unfolding – surely he must be gloating, at least inwardly. Everything was so perfect here it was rather terrifying…

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Misa blink a little when L immediately concluded "Shinigami" in reference to Higuchi's utterance of "Rem", apparently talking to himself – but thought nothing of it. Did Misa even know what a Shinigami _was?_…

Things continued to run like clockwork; until Higuchi got to Sakura TV's headquarters, obviously with the intent to murder Matsuda there himself – and now, L supposed, Higuchi too had the power of the second Kira. Desperate, with nothing more than a small hand pistol to his name, Higuchi shot at Chief Yagami, then managed to flee, escaping Mogi, Wedy and Aiber.

With L's suggestion that they – he and Light – join the chase, leaving Misa chained to a chair, everything managed to get back on track – despite Watari's orders to the NPA to leave the speeding red Porsche alone, a barricade of police cars arrived to block Higuchi off, led by none other than Aizawa and Ide – those who had turned their backs on L and his methods.

His tires expertly shot out by Watari's long-range sniping skills, and caught up and cornered by Chief Yagami, Mogi, Aiber and Wedy, with the helicopter hovering ominously overhead, Higuchi had apparently collapsed and given up; and, on being handcuffed and blindfolded, spoke brokenly of a notebook which, when written into with the name of a human, caused that human to die.

The notebook was located within Higuchi's briefcase; and then, upon their touching of it, both Chief Yagami and Mogi seemed to go into convulsing fits of terror, yelling about a 'monster'.

A glutton for punishment, apparently, L had wasted no time in demanding that the notebook be brought to him; and taking it, holding it delicately at each corner between his thumbs and forefingers, and allowing his eyes to widen a little further as a pale-white, spiny, terrible creature, born of death-filled nightmares, manifested itself from nothing into his field of vision.

…_Shinigami…_

And yet, despite this – despite the fact that reality had apparently had a gash suddenly torn into it, though which this… _thing_ had spilled out onto a Tokyo speedway…

While L held Kira's killing tool, everything still seemed to be held together at the seams.

It was only when Light Yagami reached over and snatched the notebook from him that those stitches were suddenly torn undone—

Because Light Yagami _screamed_.

* * *

_The very moment his fingers touched the Death Note, tugging it away from L, something that was, truthfully, not unlike an electric shock shot through Light; bursting invisibly from the notebook and into his fingertips and shuddering right throughout his whole body._

_It wasn't exactly painful, but it tore his breath from his lungs nonetheless; and then, his eyes wide open but utterly unseeing, his mind was filled first with blinding white, and then—_

_Images; words; thoughts; __**memories**__. Hundreds upon thousands of them, suddenly flooding his skull – seething and swarming, spewing forth plague like a lanced boil. The hard cross-grained knots of memory that had always been embedded in Light, long before the straight-grained fairytale threw a cotton wool of innocent daily life over them. Time defying whorls of experience that now skittered uncontrollably forth, proof of a former life, morality, and identity, as though they had been captured in a tightly-locked box which had suddenly been smashed open._

_A tsunami shattering floodgates. _

_He gripped the notebook and screamed – unable to help it, the cry involuntarily clawing its way out of him from the sheer magnitude of having all the previously-lost memories crash his "I-don't-remember-being-Kira-therefore-I'm-not-Kira" party and make themselves at home; knocking over furniture, breaking vases and puking up on the carpet while they were at it._

_Everything began to slot rapidly back into place, jostling into each other along the way, as the completion of what he once was frantically filled out in a few racing seconds– and he remembered finding the Death Note, and Ryuk, and all his tests of how the notebook worked, and his first run-in with L, and his later run-ins with "Ryuga" at the university, and Misa, and his desperation to get L's name, and Misa's capture, and then his plan—_

_His plan._

_His plan, which had gone… exactly to plan._

_Off to his left, he heard L sharply say his name; and he stopped screaming._

_He glanced at L; heard him speak, say something about anyone being shocked at seeing the Shinigami, but he didn't really __**hear**__ him, the words falling only as crusty senseless phonics in his ears, since the only thought he could hear screaming like a maniac through his head now, was the knowledge that he had to cling onto the Death Note, lest his memories be forcibly torn from him once more._

_Ignorance was no longer his desire._

_He noticed L's long fingers flexing a little, as though he was about to reach for the notebook and take it back; and no, he couldn't have it, the bastard wasn't getting it, it was Light's notebook and he was Kira and L couldn't have it—_

_He knew he had to kill Higuchi while still managing to hold onto the notebook, and so acting oblivious, suggested that he check the names listed in the Death Note's pages against those on the Yotsuba-related killings database._

_L was slipping, the damned fool; for he agreed, and made no more effort to take the notebook away from Light. Which was a relief, since Light couldn't very well throw a tantrum and cling onto it and refuse to give it back…_

_Turning away from L and flipping on the monitor, Light reached for his watch; clicking the dial four times in succession, and sliding out the compartment underneath, secured on which was the tiny scrap of Death Note sheet and a needle._

_He recalled now, in a wave that made him shiver a little, that L had taken his watch from his wrist one of those many nights, and Light had allowed him to paw over it, having no memory of the Death Note piece hidden inside it. He knew now how lucky he was that L hadn't really been looking all that hard that night…_

_Though the dramatic irony only added to his smile now._

_Taking the needle steadily between his thumb and forefinger, Light very carefully (like dear Sleeping Beauty) pricked his finger, drawing blood onto the point._

_He heard L talking again, and nodded; as though to lull the detective, make him feel comfortable that he was listening to him and agreeing with him, even as he wrote, scratched in needle-point blood:_

_Kyosuke Higuchi._

_He snapped his watch shut again, rubbing away the blood on his finger; those final forty seconds painful and suspended. Light clung onto the notebook, glancing at L, talking to him, kept him talking, distracting him, and no, he couldn't have the notebook—_

_Oh god, if L were to snatch it back now, when there was so little time left… Were L to grasp in it that stupid dainty way of his just as Higuchi buckled on the road and died, it would become his – it would be L's Death Note then, and Rem would become attached to him, and then she would be obliged to tell him anything he asked about the Death Note…_

_If he asked – and being L, no doubt he would – she would have to tell him about ownership and the memory loss process and the trade for Shinigami Eyes and if any of the rules were fake, and everything would be ruined – she'd unravel everything, everything that he had so meticulously planned, and he and Misa would be caught, and L would have won, and…_

_Light gripped the Death Note more tightly than ever—_

_And Higuchi collapsed._

_And on feigning surprise and horror, as Chief Yagami and Mogi began to panic all over again, Light put the notebook down – and his memories stayed intact, glimmering and sizzling, back where they belonged._

_They, and his ultimate goal, and the Death Note itself, ready to be used again._

_He recalled his love for L – he recalled waking up intertwined with him that very morning, awoken by the sensation of the detective apparently attempting to eat his shoulder; he recalled kissing him in the kitchen; he recalled their Morning Break Box Closet Happy Time™; he recalled L nonchalantly touching his hand as they made their way up to the roof to the helicopter._

_But that was before he had had the Death Note back in his hands again – and the Death Note had always been Light Yagami's most favorite thing ever, and now, with his memories intact and the power back in his hand, that love for the man beside him suddenly seemed like a distant echo, a false previous ghost life that needed to be pasted flat sharpish. _

_He was L, and Light was Kira, for fuck's sake, the Prime Mover, himself unmoved… _

_That meant L could not live._

_Light remembered Kira, Light remembered what Kira felt, and Light remembered what Kira required. _

_(Even love, something neither Light nor L had ever felt before loving each other, was drowned beneath the power of the Death Note – the power to kill…)_

_Lost beneath this tragic magic._

_And now, fully conscious of it, nearly suffocating in the feverish disgust and cruel vengeance that held reminiscence of L in a wicked limbo, Light found himself asking again:_

_Tell me, L, my love… How would you like to die?_

* * *

It was late.

L was tripping over himself concerning the surfacing of the Death Note – the power behind Kira – and wanted nothing more than to just be left alone with the notebook to chew over the avalanche of a revelation. Indeed, Light had noticed that he kept _touching_ it – kept picking it up, holding it in that _stupid_ fashion – dangling it by a corner and gazing, wide-eyed, up at it, kept opening it, turning it over, dropping it back onto the table, prodding at it, flipping through it, running his fingertips over it…

He seemed utterly fixated by it – and nothing else seemed to matter to him now. He had clung onto it all the way back to the investigation office and then perched on one of the couches with it, clutching it covetously, so that no-one dared try to take it from him.

He barely seemed to notice anyone around him. He ignored Chief Yagami. He ignored Light. He even ignored _Rem_, who had come along for the ride.

Well, no – it wasn't that. It was that Rem was now attached to Light – but L didn't know that, and L wasn't _going_ to know that.

But it was late now (or early) – bordering on three in the morning, and Light had finally managed to drag L away from the office and upstairs.

The Death Note came along too – as though L feared it would disappear if he let it out of his sight for even a moment.

Light shot a fiery glance at Rem across the room behind L's back, silently commanding her to stay put; if she came too, it would look suspicious, like she was following Light around.

Which she _was_.

Within the space of a few hours, a lot had changed between Light and L – more so on Light's part, for the memory-wiped version of himself that L had fallen in love with had been evicted and replaced with the homicidal version that L had originally set out to catch.

L hadn't touched him at all since the notebook had come into his hands – he had barely looked in his direction, in fact. The Death Note had apparently come between them for now – although L's fascination with the slim black notebook was rather more morbid than his fascination with the slim brunette teenager.

In a lot of ways, Light was relieved. His overwhelming love for L – one that had gained grim, dangerous momentum these last few weeks, while they had battled Yotsuba side-by-side – had all but been evicted along with his former personality: It was like _The Shining_ up there in his head, with a serious case of "Heeeeeeeeeeere's Kira!", smashing through doors with an axe, the works…

Did Light Yagami love L? Yes, he did – he had learned to love him, and had learned very well.

Did _Kira_ love L?

Light almost _shuddered_ at the thought of kissing him. Kira's haughtiness had resettled in his bones, and he cringed inwardly when he thought of all the times L had tricked him and overpowered him… No, _Kira_ did _not_ let _L_ do these things to him…

He wanted to grab hold of him and break every slender bone in his body, just for _daring_ to _think_ that he should ever be allowed to dominate Kira. For _actually_ dominating Kira – as he had done, a vast number of times, mostly through trickery and surprise – well…

Light felt a powerful seething ill-intent and didn't even know where to _begin_ in thinking what he would like to do to him. Locking him up and leaving him to starve to death didn't seem bloody enough, but yet taking an axe to him while asleep and hacking him apart seemed too merciful…

Still… He was being irrational. He knew that. There was time enough, L would die, and it would be via the Death Note. At present they were still handcuffed together, but he anticipated that by this time tomorrow, he and Misa would be free.

And then, _when_ he was free, and had gotten L's name at his own leisure, he could choose a way for him to die. An accident, perhaps? Light knew now that L never wore a seatbelt in the car. Or perhaps suicide? He could make L _really_ jump from that goddamn window… Or maybe he'd go with an ironic approach, and have him choke to death on cake.

Strawberry cheesecake.

Regardless of L's impending death, Light was still willing to screw him – but he didn't want to be underneath anymore. It wasn't the feeling – L had gotten reasonably skilled by now, the extent to which they "practiced", but Light (Kira) just couldn't _stomach_ the _thought_ of letting him… _letting_ him…

Things had changed now – _Light_ had changed. He could never return to what he had been, not now that he knew it was all a lie, cleverly constructed months ago as a plot to clear his name. He had never expected a relationship to arise from it. He wasn't willing to let L smack him around anymore, like a cat tormenting a mouse; Light wanted a turn at being the cat now, so that he could toss L around mercilessly before killing him. Because now the stakes had risen, and Light had something to fight for – his goddamn _life_.

"Will you _put that away_?" Light snapped tiredly, unbuttoning his shirt; glancing at L, who was perched on the bed, staring down at the Death Note. "Why do you want that thing near you? It's creepy."

L only glanced at him sparingly, before returning his gaze to the notebook.

Light didn't know whether to be furious or not with L's behavior; on one hand, he was rather glad that the little freak wasn't pawing all over him with his cold, bony little hands, or kissing him with his blasphemous mouth (for surely anyone who spoke against Kira was a blasphemer…).

But on the other hand, he was rather miffed; true, the Light Yagami Charm™ had never really worked on L, but undoubtedly – especially these last few weeks – L had been all over him, barely able to keep his hands off him, and now he wasn't even _looking_ at him, more interesting in a fucking _notebook_…

How dare _L_, of all people (a virgin until Light had thrown him into the Pit of Sinful Pleasure; and god, he was _such a __**freak**_…), dismiss him; _him_, Light Yagami…? It was utterly unthinkable that someone like L should ignore someone like Light – couldn't he see how _lucky_ he was, that Light had taken pity on him; there were girls (and some boys, no doubt) who would _kill_ to have with Light what L had had.

_Misa_ was an excellent example (and once Light's plan had reached its far limits, she would have the power to do so, if she wished, the little fool…).

Oh, yes, L – social misfit, inhumanly clever, with enough oddities about him to fill three warehouses… Who would _ever_ look at him and be sexually attracted to him? If it wasn't for Light, he would be _dying_ a virgin; if it wasn't for Light, he—

"Hey!" Light blazed, grabbing L's wrist. "I said put it away! It's _sick_. I don't want it on the bed."

"You are a very good actor, Light-kun," L replied quietly, finally meeting his gaze.

Light's "How-dare-he-not-be-worshipping-the-very-ground-I-walk-on" rampage shuddered to a stop for a moment; could L _really_ tell that he had… _changed_?

But, incidentally, Light _was_ an excellent actor; and his shock never even got near his expression.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" He asked, sounding suitably angry and hurt as he pulled off his shirt.

"Well… aside from the fact that I am about twenty-seven per cent confident that you have seen something like this notebook before, Light-kun – perhaps even this _very_ notebook – I do not think I am wrong in calling you a liar when you say that you don't want it on the bed."

"_Why_ would I want it on the _bed_?"

"Oh, the location is not what is important. What your statement implies is that you don't want it near you – that it frightens you."

"It _does_. It's a notebook that _kills_ people."

"I am aware of that." L tilted his head. "Regardless, I think you are lying again. You do not fear this notebook's power, Light-kun. I do not either. It fascinates me. I think it must fascinate you too."

"Yes, okay, it's interesting," Light said wearily. "But we can look at it tomorrow. Can you _please_ put it away so we can go to bed?"

Light made to grab it and L quickly removed it from his reach, looking at him all the while.

"Ryuzaki…!"

"I'm sorry, Light-kun. I'd rather keep it with me."

Light shook his head disgustedly, turning away to pull on his pajamas.

"_You're_ sick, Ryuzaki – clutching that horrible notebook like that…"

"You were holding it earlier. Extremely tightly, I might add."

_So he __**did**__ notice…_

"I was checking the database!" Light bit out.

"You were still holding it when Higuchi died from a heart attack."

"Well, where's his _name_ then, genius?" Light blazed, brandishing his hand angrily at the Death Note. "If I'm Kira and I killed him, where's his fucking _name_?!"

"Light-kun, there is no need for such language…" was L's only reply to that.

Light sighed huffily and turned from him again – smirking the moment his back was turned.

_You won't find Higuchi's name, L – not in the Death Note. But I __**did**__ kill him, and __**you're**__ next on my list…_

"You don't match."

Light blinked, turning to him again irritably.

"_What_?"

L held up the notebook, presumably so that both it and Light were in his field of vision, and he could line them up against one another.

"You don't match," he said again. "This Death Note… it's so ugly, and _you_… you're not. Neither is Misa-san."

"Well, thankyou, Ryuzaki."

"It wasn't a compliment, Light-kun," L said dully. "It was a statement. It is merely ironic. Frankly, this notebook is one of the most hideous things I've ever seen, and it carries a power uglier even than its appearance. It seems such an unlikely accessory for someone like you, Light-kun, or Amane-san to have on your person."

"That's because neither of us have ever _had_ one," Light said impatiently. "Ryuzaki, I'm going to be in the NPA like my dad. Misa's a model, and now a film star. You're right – why would either of us ever have a use for something like _that_?"

"I didn't say you wouldn't have a use for it."

"Well, I _wouldn't_." Light pulled back the covers and got into bed. "I'm going to sleep."

L finally gave him his full attention.

"It's my turn, Light-kun," he said immediately.

"Too bad." Light closed his eyes. "I'm not standing around waiting for you to stop gawking at that notebook."

"I'm studying it."

"Ryuzaki, it's _three_ in the morning."

"You know I don't sleep, Light-kun."

"Well, I do. And I _am_."

"I will not be long, if you—"

"Listen!" Light blazed, sitting upright and glaring at him. "Make a decision. Either put the notebook the _hell_ away or go without."

When L only stared at him blankly, Light gave a frustrated groan and flopped back onto the pillow – he was hoping that L was going to opt for just staring at the notebook for the entire night, to be honest. L had stated that it was his turn to be on top, which was perfectly correct, and Light supposed that if he didn't want L to start suspecting him too much (he had a grim feeling that L had maybe noticed, just a little, that he was different…), he had better comply with it.

Which was something he no longer had an interest in.

But then, his eyes closed, he felt L's weight sink down beside him, and then the rustling of his pillow; Light opened his eyes and glanced across, noting with mingled hilarity and annoyance that L was putting the Death Note under his pillow.

Was it, in all honesty, some kind of _true_ death wish that he had? Because Light could grant that wish, and would be soon enough – yes, little Cinderella would go to the ball…

"You're so weird," he said finally.

L glanced at him.

"I just want to know that it's safe."

"You could have locked it in a drawer downstairs."

L shook his head.

"The Shinigami might take it."

Light rolled his eyes.

"If you say so…"

"Where _is_ the Shinigami?"

"I don't know."

"Isn't she attached to the notebook?"

"I don't know. Does it matter? I don't think _Shinigamis_ kill people, you know."

"What makes you think that?"

Light shrugged.

"Why would she have given the Death Note to Higuchi if she can kill humans herself? Seems kind of pointless."

"Boredom, perhaps."

"Heh. Maybe."

_Not Rem, L; Ryuk, though…_

Light fought away the urge to throw L off when he began to kiss him; sprawled on top of him, his arms around Light's neck. Light put one arm around L's waist, his other hand tangling in the detective's hair, and after a while, found that it wasn't as hard as he had anticipated it would be to respond.

Maybe it was just a spark of old attraction still there, like a ghost limb; or maybe it was something more perverse. Maybe he was getting turned on _because_ he was Kira and he was kissing and touching L, and _because_ they were enemies, and _because_ he hated him – and maybe it was because L was in the last days of his life, and Light knew that and L didn't…

But it wasn't that he still loved him. Light Yagami did not suppose even for a moment that it was that.

L started on his throat, and Light allowed his eyes to slit open a little, pushing L's wild hair out of his face—

And jumping, unable able to suppress his gasp of shock, on seeing the tall, spindly white figure of Rem looming at the end of the bed.

He glared at her, clamping a hand to the back of L's skull to keep him against his throat so that he wouldn't see her; he glared, as though to scream "What the hell do you think you're _doing_?!"; he glared, hoping she'd get the message and clear off.

But Rem didn't budge, only standing there, forlorn and skeletal; until Light had no choice. He had to let L know she was here, otherwise he'd eventually see her himself, and then wonder why Light hadn't said anything.

"Hey, Ryuzaki," he said woodenly, pulling at L's hair to make him stop devouring his throat. "The Shinigami is in here."

L immediately left off Light's neck, kneeling up and turning around to look at her. He was silent for a moment, gazing at her with his wide, black mirror-mirror eyes.

"Hello, Rem-san," he said finally, his voice dull.

She didn't answer him; only stared at him, her yellow eyes glassy.

_What the hell is she doing?_ Light thought furiously. _Why is she here? Why is she just looking at him?_

He found himself unsettled, because he knew it was against the rules for a Shinigami to tell a human the name of another human – and even if it wasn't, Rem would never tell _him_ L's name. So he wondered why she was here, why she was so interested in L…

And then, as he followed her gaze, he realized—

She wasn't looking at L. She was looking at the spot directly above his head. And yes, that was where she could see his name, but…

Yes – she was reading his remaining lifespan.

And judging by the way she was staring at it, it must have been drastically short, because she couldn't seem to take her gaze off it.

But L didn't know about the Shinigami Eyes, or names, or lifespans, so he couldn't _possibly_ know what she was looking at.

"Light-kun," L said eventually, still gazing at Rem, "why is she staring at me?"

"I don't know," Light replied testily. "Maybe she's going to kill you."

Both L and Rem looked at him sharply at that; Light shrugged nonchalantly, hoping Rem had gotten the message.

"Why would you say that, Light-kun?" L asked quietly, as Rem took one last look at L's lifespan before slinking off through the wall.

"She's a _death_ god, Ryuzaki," Light snapped. "Seems logical to me."

L was silent for a while.

"I don't want to die, Light-kun," he said finally.

"I know." Light pulled him close. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. It's okay, I mean… like I said, maybe Shinigamis can't _even_ kill. And she doesn't know your name, anyway."

Light brushed away a strand of hair at L's face; and as he did so, L caught his finger, looking at the tip of it.

"Did you prick your finger, Light-kun?" He asked.

"What? Oh… yeah, I guess I must have…"

"How?"

"I don't know. I didn't notice."

L looked at him for a long while.

"You should be more careful, then."

"I know." Light pulled him back down to the mattress. "I will. I'm just so careless sometimes…"

"I don't think that's true."

"Thankyou, Ryuzaki."

"It wasn't a compliment, Light-kun." L stared right into Light's eyes, for no real reason, or so Light felt. "It was a statement."

Light said nothing more; only remained satisfied in a further statement – Rem had not spoken at all, but she had as good as told him that L's days were numbered.

And it was satisfying for Kira to know that, while he found the pillow in his face, on his knees and elbows, the bastard oh-so-smart detective thrusting into him – or, at least, thinking he was fucking Light Yagami, who was lost via most tragic magic.

Kira only grit his teeth and clenched his fists and let him have his fun; he'd soon be six feet under, and _finally_…

Finally out of Light's goddamn _way_.

* * *

**Narroch: **I feel like we gotta apologize for this chapter... There was a lot of filler in there, and we know if you have already seen/read it it is a nuisance to rehash. And if you haven't seen/read it, well damn, its just one big spoiler. Sorry about that. But it had to be done, and we didn't want to drag it out for more than one chapter since most of you probably already knew the canon storyline. So, we cram it all in there to explain what the hell is going on and then we move right along with the plot. And while it is filler, you gotta admit it is pretty damn well researched filler. Names, dates, events, it's ALL canon, and all credit for that goes to Robinrocks since I have the attention span of a goldfish when it comes to recalling the specific details necessary to engineer such an impressive retelling.

**RobinRocks: **Nyes, well… boring as it may be, the Yotsuba arc is crammed full of bits that you tend to forget after a while, so I put all that stuff together so that nobody would get confused and be like "But I thought Light did this after Misa did that" and stuff. That was honestly as condensed as I could make it.

**Narroch: **Wow, and how about that! Light is Kira now! Who saw that coming, egads, so unpredictable we are... Awww, but I am going to miss No-Memory!Light. He was such a cute lil boy scout…

**RobinRocks: **Yeah, forshame… Just as their relationship was starting to get all cute and cosy… BAM! Kira!Light kicks the lovenest door down.

**Narroch: **Hope y'all enjoyed the chapter, please leave a review, you know we love 'em, and they encourage us to update!

**RobinRocks: **Catch up next time for the Grand Finale of _Fairietalye_! Happily ever after?

I think not.

- RobinRocks and Narroch xXx

P.S: Another completely random note that may or may not interest you: Winchester, where Wammy's House is. I applied to university there (the University of Winchester, not Wammy's House… my, THAT might be entertaining…)! They offered my a place too, but I came to Birmingham instead.

Tch, imagine going to Wammy's House. You'd come out with some kind of freakish addiction, oral fixation and only one outfit…


	10. Ever After

Most noble ladies and gentlemen, welcome one and all to the Final Chapter of Act One: _Fairietayle_ of _Poison Apple_.

Many of you announced that you would in fact be bringing tissues to your reading of this – good, you'll need them… for the _blood_, you understand. "Epic" isn't the word for this chapter. It's 28 pages' worth of Size 8 Verdana. O.o

As always, announcements:

**One:** It's my birthday. Nyah ha ha. I, RobinRocks, am nineteen as of today, 3rd December – and I think my parents think Disneyland sent me crazy, because I got a Sleeping Beauty birthday card, _Sleeping Beauty_ on DVD and Disney Princess wrapping paper. They don't understand that it is fact _Poison Apple_ which has sent me crazy… Anyway, LAME that we update on my birthday, yes, BUT also good, because it's a Monday, which is earlier than our usual update day. So no complaints…

**Two:** The poll! Wow, we have something like 80 votes now! Thankyou all so much! Light is still losing, BTW. Ka ka ka, poor lil uke…

**Three: **Speaking of polls, I read recently that there was a poll of the top 30 Disney villains taken a while back, and who came Number One? Why, Maleficent, of course. :D

**Four: **The character test – some more people have been saying who they got, and we've now accumulated another Light, another L, a Ray Penber and another Mello/Sayu/Misa/Matsuda combination. Still, even if there _are_ now two Ls, two Lights and two Rems are still pretty unfair odds…

Thankyou to: **Previously-recorded, Nocens, fallen.angel.wings, Phoenix of Hell, DoYouFindMeDreadful, Travian Sez, GreyLiliy, Nilahxapiel, Jenna, Zaybex, Inu Yokai 911, Saecula, Stargirl7, Mask of Mirage, AmberBlood, Ichigo Kiss, Oztan, Milk0bar, Jyrenze, Accidental Affinity, Li the Twilight Knight, Phoenix Elentari, ElegantArrow64, MeEksiNs, Mihael-kun, Rainbowness, Itallia, Ali, Sister Salsa, Bloodshot Eyes, Fugitive, Rahima, Acid FireKira-kun, AlchemicReaction, Kiyoiyuki, Sukutai, DarkDragon34, Lady Psychic, The Ultimate Fic Critic, Death-to-the-tadpoleclowns, Non al Denaro Non all'Amore, Rozel, Dawn-at-Midnight, Issis Chandra Wu, Sophabelle **and **baka-neko-fan**!!

Lastly, before we begin, a treat: _Poison Apple_ is told predominantly from Light's (third-person) point-of-view. However, this chapter, _Ever After_, which chronicles roughly the last week of L's life, breaks the mold by offering insights into Rem and, most importantly, L. In fact, almost _all_ of this chapter is taken from L's viewpoint rather than Light's, as L remains oblivious (sort of) to Light's sudden Kira-ness… It adds a more poignant feel because it gave us the opportunity to write Light as he has acted for the rest of the fic (without his memories), since this is how he would still behave around L – just bear in mind that he's a lying bastard at this point…

And _enjoy_ it, because this is the only chapter to do so.

* * *

_I've never felt so alone in my life_

_As I drank from a cup which was counting my time;_

_There's a poison drop in this Cup of Man-_

_To drink it is to follow the left-hand path..._

- **Nightwish**; _Bless the Child_

* * *

Ever After

_L is dead._

Light Yagami took great delight in etching those three words – those seven letters; maybe one for each sin – into L's back with the tip of his finger; barely touching him, so as not to awaken him. He was rarely awake before L – at least, rarely _this_ awake, but having all his memories restored was like skulling back several shots of virility and vehemence, suddenly invigorating him, as though he had stolen all of the energy that L usually possessed and transferred it to his own body, leaving the detective a Sleeping Beauty _wreck_.

He felt rather deliciously _wired_, to be frank – strong, and suddenly pulled together, like every part of him was soldered back where it belonged and a powerful charge was able to flow through the completed circuit, where before it could only spark weakly between the broken connections of choppy non-memory. But now, with that power surging and reconnecting everything he had lost, he was unstoppable. Damn it, it was stupid-o'-clock in the morning, but he felt like he could screw L brainless.

Yes, screw _L_ brainless.

_Though if you __**were**__ brainless, like, say… __**Matsuda**__, I wouldn't have to kill you._

He left off the invisible message, wrapping his arms around the sleeping detective and pulling him close; and though L was undeniably much stronger than he looked, wiry whipcord muscles beneath his pale skin, while he was asleep, it was easy to notice how small he actually was.

Not tiny, like Misa; but for an adult man, some almost-but-not-quite twenty-five years of age, his bone structure seemed slightly underdeveloped, perhaps stunted from all the coffee, and he looked as though he was actually still a teenager, just on the brink of that growth spurt that all boys eventually have. His ribs felt like glass rods and all his awkward bony angles felt temptingly breakable.

He and Light were around the same height; but Light, despite being younger, was bigger-boned and built a little more bulkily, and right now, with L sleeping in his arms, he felt as though he could quite easily crush the detective to his chest and snap him in two.

Though there were _better_ ways of breaking L in half.

That notion drove Light to do something both reckless and cruel, though he was quite satisfied that L was actually still asleep; lowering his mouth to L's ear, and whispering to him;

"_I'm Kira_."

A death-wish, perhaps – but L didn't stir at all, though Light had known anyway that he wasn't awake. L _never_ pretended to be asleep. It was as though he actually felt _ashamed_ of himself for needing sleep at all.

And though he was aware that sometimes those asleep could hear spoken words whispered to them, the most delicious part of _that_ was that… if L _had_ subconsciously heard him confess, there was no way he could ever prove that Light had actually said it.

The cameras had been removed from their room long ago, at L's own request.

Stupid fool.

Ah, yes, indeed – there were far better ways of breaking darling, lovely L in two.

* * *

Light wasn't sure whether he'd exaggerated the sigh of relief he expressed on the handcuff finally being unlocked from his wrist; and, if he had, what the purpose of the act was.

To piss L off? To hurt his feelings?

He didn't spare a glance at the detective as he rubbed his freed wrist; even willing to slap the hopeless Matsuda a high five.

Beaming with a pep rally grin, and maybe on some kind of narcotic, Matsuda swanned past Light, arm still raised, as though to offer L a high five as well. L, curled in his chair at his computer, only blinked up at him blankly.

"Yes, Matsuda-san?"

Matsuda's smile faltered, as did his palm-spread hand.

"High five?" He asked tentatively. "For Light being cleared of suspicion?"

L offered him some kind of half-assed thumbs up and immediately went back to his computer screen.

His own handcuff was still on his wrist.

Matsuda skulked off – even _he_ could sense the major "Leave me alone" vibe radiating in venom-drenched waves from L's introverted form.

Light did glance back at him now, and wondered on another disinterested level, as he had many times before, how L could manage to fold himself into such a tiny space. Though Light had observed only that morning – and often before – that L was slightly-built, he was still quite tall (probably taller than Light, actually, if he'd bother to stand up straight for once) and seemed to be made entirely of sharp bony angles.

Light would know, of course.

"We should have a party," declared Aizawa (who had returned since the whole Higuchi thing). "You know, to celebrate Light and Misa being cleared and released."

"Yeah!" Matsuda agreed dramatically, waving his arms around in a way that enabled him to perform a rather accurate impression of a two-legged octopus. "Misa-Misa would love that!"

Chief Yagami gave a meditative nod, turning to his son.

"What do you think, Light?"

"I… uh…" Light actually found himself rather floored by the suggestion; certainly it would be a good distraction now that he and Misa were to take up their Kira roles again, but a _party_…?

It seemed so _tacky_.

He would never thank L, but the detective actually came to his rescue;

"That is absolutely out of the question," he said coldly, finally turning his chair to face the rest of the task force.

"Aww, why not?" Matsuda whined; and maybe, if he'd been a few feet closer, L would seriously have kicked him for being so stupid and childish and annoying and… _Matsuda_.

"A number of reasons," L snapped. "One, it is highly unprofessional to be engaging in parties every time a suspect is cleared of suspicion. And two, I am still not exactly, entirely one hundred percent confident that Light-kun and Amane-san _are_ completely cleared of suspicion."

"You said there were a _number_ of reasons," Matsuda muttered.

"_Two_ is a number, Matsuda-san," L bit out, swiveling back to his computer screen.

"Ryuzaki… y-you can't be _serious_…?" Chief Yagami asked faintly. "Light… you imprisoned him, you monitored him 24/7, and now the notebook… the notebook has all but cleared Light and Amane, surely you can't still think—"

"Unfortunately, I _can_, Yagami-san." L picked up his teacup, swilling the hot liquid around the rim of it thoughtfully. "The 13 day rule is what exempts Light-kun and Amane-san from being further regarded as Kira suspects, but… we have not tested the notebook. Until we do, we cannot be one hundred per cent sure that neither of them are Kira."

"Ryuzaki, that's utterly unthinkable!" Chief Yagami snapped. "We cannot… the notebook is not…!"

L spared the older man a glance over his shoulder.

"Then you see my problem, Yagami-san."

His chocolate eyes darting between L and his father, Light decided to make a gamble; hoping to shut L up once and for all.

"Look," he said, raising his hands as though in surrender, "I'm not Kira, and I want _everyone_ to be one hundred per cent clear of that. So, you know… if Ryuzaki wants to put the handcuffs back on—"

"No, I won't allow any more of this!" Chief Yagami interrupted right on cue, taking Light's elbow and actually pulling him across the room _away_ from L. "Light, I know you want to clear your name, but… your name has _been_ cleared. You've done more than anyone could have asked for. I won't have you going through this all again. It's only Ryuzaki who refuses to be satisfied."

"Yagami-san," L started, "if Light-kun does not object to—"

"_No_, Ryuzaki." Chief Yagami didn't even look at the legendary detective this time. "We've all had enough of this nonsense. My son is _not_ Kira. And he's been away from home for over three months, constantly under your surveillance… You agreed not to monitor him or Amane any longer." Finally Chief Yagami shot L a look. "I expect you to keep your promise, _L_."

_Ha_, Light thought, knowing he was over the safe line; that gamble had played out perfectly. _You'd have liked that, wouldn't you, Ryuzaki? More chain time? You perverted little freak…_

Well, at any rate, that had shut off his reservoir once and for all. Daddy Yagami had come down hard on the pesky creep and effectively told him to back off sharpish.

(To be honest, Light had often wondered if his father suspected that he and L didn't just lie in bed side by side like perfectly good little boys, with the entire length of chain between them; given that they were both young men, chained together at the wrist for such a long amount of time, and given that Light was a charmer and L was just fucking weird, it didn't seem altogether ludicrous that they should be at it like rabbits before long.)

Maybe he knew, to be honest. Maybe that was why he was truly so insistent. Maybe he didn't want that vile detective pawing all over his son anymore.

"Fine, forget the party," Chief Yagami said finally with a sigh. "Ryuzaki is right, it is not very professional, and would be distracting." He placed a hand on Light's shoulder. "But we're going to go out for dinner tonight, with your mother and Sayu. We haven't all been together as a family for a while."

Light smiled warmly and nodded.

"Yeah, dad. That'll be nice."

He noticed L peek around the edge of his chair out of the corner of his eye, though did not catch eye-contact with him; he looked as though he wanted to say something, something to keep Light here, hold him as his prisoner…

Something dumb, like "I need Light-kun to stay here alone with me so he can sort paper clips"; 'alone' being the operative term, and the further, unspoken part being "…And so I can screw him against the photocopying machine the moment you all leave the room, paper clips be damned".

He said nothing, though. Only turned away and resumed typing, the handcuff still at his wrist jingling and clacking against the desk. The other empty end of it trailed forlornly on the floor beyond his chair; as though maybe he was still clinging to a feeble wisp of hope that Light might feel _sorry_ for him and come and slip his hand back into it.

_But I'm not the one being watched anymore, Ryuzaki._ Light allowed his smirk to be only inverted, so that no-one could know of its existence but him. _You're not keeping me close anymore – it's been reversed; only you don't know it yet._

That in mind, Light did not alter his working-day's routine – he still sat in his same seat, four feet to the left of L, still lined his highlighters up in the same combination of colors, marking with them using sharp, strong strokes across the page, still drank coffee, still stapled things for L when the detective thrust stacks of paper at him, and still _smiled_ at L when their gazes met.

No, his performance was perfect in every way – it was _L_ who was different.

L sat gloomily in his chair, hunched up, occasionally – absently – cramming sugar cubes into his mouth; the Death Note open in front of him on the desk, propped up on his keyboard.

Just staring at it, head a little to one side, black eyes wide and glazed; clearly very deep in thought.

The other difference was Rem; the strange white entity who floated to and fro like Casper the Antisocial Ghost. Sure, she answered when spoken to, but mostly she spent her time at the back of the room, her gaze flickering from Light to Misa (on the monitors) to L (or the lifespan floating dreamily above his dark head).

Light knew that there was something absurdly abnormal about L's lifespan, even though he could not see it himself; it was either way too long (in retrospect of the fact that Rem knew Light wanted the man dead) or scarily short.

He was more than willing to gamble upon the latter, and thus could understand and indulge in Rem's bewilderment. L had maybe only a few days left, yet Misa was still without either memories or Shinigami Eyes and was to be removed from the building later that day, and Light himself had no intention of trading half his life solely for the ability to see L's true name, Rem knew that.

So that was why she wondered, glancing between the three of them – she wondered just what Light Yagami was planning, and how L was to die when, despite his tiny lifespan, he was still safe behind the masks of L and Ryuzaki.

_Rem_ could see his name, of course, floating in ruby above the jumble of numbers that counted down the days and hours and minutes and seconds he had left alive; every time the detective glanced at her and asked her a question, she made a point of reading his name.

Despite everything – his conniving, his lies, his trickery, his lust, even his _love_, were it true – Light Yagami had not managed to pry it from the older man.

And yet Rem just had to look at him and there it was, suspended above his head, like a ripe apple ready to be plucked from the boughs of a tree.

Incidentally, while Rem's respect for Light Yagami had grown a little since first meeting him, she (rather like Watari, all things considered) was not exactly a member of his fan club; and maybe it was just because she was female, but she was rather more judgmental of humans than Ryuk, who was only out and about for kicks and giggles.

Rem had concluded to herself that all humans were rather ugly and despicable creatures; and while she saw that Light Yagami was perhaps using his Death Note for more noble reasons than most presumably would (particularly those involved in Yotsuba), she still thought him a vile human being, lies coming too easily to his lips, and graced with a beauty that he only abused as a manipulation tool.

Misa loved him; it was clear that he did not love her.

And now, judging by what she saw last night, _L_ loved him too; and though Light seemed slightly more conflicted in his motions and ministrations towards the detective (confused, as though perhaps he _had_ loved him), it was clear that he did not love _him_ either.

Light Yagami was like a meteorite – hot and glowing, creating a major impact which sent shock waves shuddering through those around him, attractive because he was so interesting and brilliant, but ultimately—

_Destructive_.

Or perhaps a poisoned apple himself – alluring to the eye, deadly to the bite…

And Rem could see it now – after so long of playing this baiting game with L, and so long of building up a rivalry and a friendship and a love affair, Light Yagami was ready to deal the death card.

He'd managed the impossible; he had gotten a grip on L, and now was about to use that grip to rip him to shreds.

Not that Rem _pitied_ L – for indeed, if anyone was going to catch Misa and have her put to death as the Second Kira, it was he and he alone.

Perhaps pity was too human an emotion for a Shinigami to feel, for she did not pity L either when the working day came to an end, and everyone packed away, and Light Yagami left with his father without so much as a backwards glance at L – merely contributing to the dull, collective "See you tomorrow, Ryuzaki!" chorused by the entirety of the task force on their way out.

The door slammed, leaving only L and Rem alone in the investigation office; Rem was truthfully attached to Light, but he had hissed at her to make it look as though she was instead attached to the notebook, which was still with L.

It took the master detective a while to react to the fact that _everyone_ – bar a moody female Shinigami – had walked out on him. He slowly turned his chair around, sucking on a sugar cube, to observe first the empty room, and then the empty end of the chain trailed like a coiled silver serpent across the carpet.

Rem watched him slowly lift his own handcuffed wrist and shake it a few times, the loose cuff clattering around his thin forearm.

And then, as though carrying out a ritual, he extracted the key from the pocket of his loose jeans and tenaciously inserted it into the lock of his cuff, using only his fingertips to twist it and let the cuff snap open and fall from his slender white wrist, hitting the carpet, where it bounced a few times before rolling to a halt near the wheels of his chair.

L put his thin hands onto the arms of his chair, hoisting himself out of it in a single neat motion; and then standing and arranging himself into his usual visage, and it was perhaps the first time that Rem had seen him stand up properly, unobstructed by a teacup or cake or stack of data.

He seemed to know she was looking at him, for he raised his head and met her gaze – snow-white face framed by wild, fine spikes of ebony hair, and eyes moody and intensely dark, coal-rimmed with equal exhaustion and determination.

Glassy, too. Probably because they were so dark, but they were mirror-like, those haunted orbs.

Yes, he knew she was looking at him; and made no effort whatsoever to preen at his hair or adjust his horrendous posture, simply stood and stared right back at her, expression blasé, half-lidded, slouching, hands shoved deep into his pockets, his hair wild and his shirt crumpled and his jeans slipping a little and his feet bare, toes curling against the carpet; and L did not know of half-life deals for eyes, of names and life-spans that became kites above a person's head—

But he stood there before Rem as though he _did_; as though he was aware there was a clock ticking his time away suspended over his head like a halo, crowned with his biggest secret.

The name that nobody knew; yet Rem could read as clear as day.

"I am leaving, Rem-san," he told her finally, his Japanese to her as polite as that which he spoke to the other humans. "What will you do?"

She didn't know if that was an invitation or merely a statement, but she shook her head.

"I will stay here. I would prefer to be alone."

He gave a nod and picked up the Death Note between his fingertips.

"I had hoped you would say that, Rem-san." He started out of the room. "I wish to be alone too."

Rem wasn't entirely sure she believed that, given that, for the very briefest of moments, when Light had walked out without even looking at him, L's fist had clenched, as though he felt that Light had thrust a sword through his heart.

But she watched him trail away, taking his name and his lifespan and the Death Note with him, and was certain that L had been far safer when he _was_ alone.

* * *

It felt _strange_ to be alone. And he thought it strange that it _felt_ strange to him, given that he was used to being alone, and liked to be alone, and felt comfortable alone, and had chosen to _be_ alone for almost the whole of his life.

Frankly, he'd never known what it was like to be lonely – until now.

Light Yagami had never known what it was like be lonely, either, L supposed – but Light was smart and handsome and popular and charismatic. People flocked around him like moths around a… well, a _light_…

And now that the chain had been removed, Light had simply swanned off back to his adoring family; his proud father and worshiping mother and awed little sister.

And done so without so much as a backwards glance at L.

The detective hated imprecise figures – and yet now found himself faced with such, torn in two by his feelings and his rationality.

As he lay alone in the dark on the bed that only this morning he had been sharing with Light, one hand on his stomach and the other behind his head, he felt very annoyed and rejected that Light had gone home with his father – the boy had even forfeited his turn to be on top.

Yet his rationality told him that it was perfectly understandable that Light had gone home after being away for so long, reasonable that he should want to spend time with his family, and, incidentally, that Light wasn't _obliged_ to stay anymore, being free.

Maybe the relationship had been nothing; just a little something to ease the boy's frustrations while restrained. He _was_ only still a teenager, after all.

Though such a conclusion made L feel that he had simply been used – and L didn't like to think that he had been used. Not by Light Yagami, not by _anyone_.

Yet could it have really been so meaningless to him, for him to just go off like that…? Did that mean it was _over_? Just something between them as long as the chain was there – forgotten about the moment they could move more than six feet apart?

He dwelled on that depressing train of thought for a while; then pulled himself together in two stages.

The first stage was to reason that just because Light had gone home on the night he had been freed, it didn't mean he didn't like L anymore; in fact, it probably would have looked suspicious to his father if he had refused to leave even after being freed.

The second stage was to blink at the ceiling and realize that he was doing exactly what he had always sworn to avoid. To become enslaved – to sit and fret and worry about whether or not someone still liked you when they had said this and done that, it was all silly weak behavior, stupid, _stupid human_ behavior, and _L_ didn't, under any circumstance, fall into the thrall _of_ such behavior, it was for brainless people like Misa Amane and Matsuda…

L sat up, severely annoyed with himself for being so fucking _stupid_, and resolved to do some work. Now that Light and Misa had been freed, supposedly innocent, he was back to Square One. Higuchi was not the original Kira, that was almost certain, and that meant that the First and Second Kiras were still out there, yet to be caught.

And _that_ meant that _he_ had more to worry about than whether or not Light had skipped out on being slammed into the mattress on a nightly basis.

It wasn't just strange to be alone. It was _unsettling_.

He had gotten used to Light always being there, within a four or five feet orbit from him; on the floor of their living area with his laptop, gazing intently at his screen with those clear doe eyes, occasionally stifling a small yawn as it got later and later, and then earlier and earlier.

Incidentally, Light's laptop was still out in the living area. His clothes were all still in the closet. His toothbrush was still in the bathroom. He had literally upped and left that evening, taking nothing with him but his watch and his wallet and the clothes he was wearing.

He'd _have_ to come back at some point, then.

But that was just it. L had gotten used to him – gotten used to the clacking of his keyboard and clicking of his mouse; gotten used to his tired little sighs and half-grumbled little complaints; to his jaded "Yes, Ryuzaki", "No, Ryuzaki", less-jaded "Don't do that, Ryuzaki!", "Stop it, Ryuzaki!", and thoroughly-pissed off "Get lost, Ryuzaki!" and "Shut _up_, Ryuzaki!".

He was used to him being there in the morning and being there in the evening, being in the bed and the kitchen and anywhere else they happened to go; used to him _always_ being within a six-foot radius of him.

And now that he wasn't, L felt like a deep gravitational balance had been dislodged and he was now teetering precariously without Light there to keep him steady. He found himself looking over his shoulder every time he heard a noise, just to see what it was that Light-kun was doing, and then seeing nothing and realizing that he wasn't there.

And he found his absence very unsettling indeed; and though he scorned himself for having grown dependent on Light and his presence, it didn't change that fact that he wasn't there, and that L consequently felt rather lonely. Because even though they often bickered over silly things, like L rustling a marshmallow packet and Light telling him to stop it and L replying that he was hungry and Light saying that he should stop eating so much junk and L daintily offering him one between finger and thumb and Light telling him where to stick it—

They were still comfortable in each other's presence. Light wasn't always terribly _trusting_ of L – which the detective felt was hypocritical, since _he_ wasn't the one who was a Kira suspect; but then again, could see maybe why it was deserved – but they were comfortable nonetheless, maybe due to the equal intelligence or equal sense of justice or all the sex.

It didn't matter. On the bedroom floor with his laptop and a cup of coffee and a slice of strawberry gateaux, he couldn't concentrate. All the data was in front of him and he was reading it, but it might as well have been McDonalds' breakfast menu for all the sense it made.

Damn the brat and his distracting charm. Had he truly become reliant on Light's presence to enable him to function correctly? He didn't even want the rest of the cake – maybe he'd grown used to Light tutting and rolling his chocolate eyes at how much sugar-laden trash he ate, particularly at this time of night.

"God, it's like you don't even _taste_ it sometimes," the boy would snap, looking away.

L blinked. That had sounded real, that recollection of Light's pissed tone and words; such that he found himself looking over his shoulder once more, just to check.

No Light.

Taken with a sudden whim, L got up, taking his phone from his pocket and flopping on the bed. He flipped it open, holding it delicately between two fingers and using the forefinger of his free hand to scroll down his contacts list in search of Light's number. He located it and was about to push the 'Call' button—

And stopped himself, wide-eyed.

What the fuck was he _doing_, calling Light at 2:30am…? What the hell _was_ he, some lovesick little schoolgirl? What was he going to _say_? "Oh, hi, Light-kun, it's know it's a stupid time of night, but I really miss you and wanted to hear the sound of your voice,"…?

He snapped the phone shut again and angrily threw it onto the floor. Next he'd be wearing flouncy frothy Lolita skirts and arranging his hair in pigtails – it certainly _seemed_ as though he was fast turning into Amane-san, at any rate…

He _did_ miss Light, though. He couldn't deny it. He _wanted_ to, but he couldn't. Maybe he was just finally going crazy in the head to match all his little oddities – for _he_, cool and controlled master detective L, to fall so deeply under someone's spell was utterly ridiculous. He'd spent half his life maintaining that all this nonsense was utterly beneath him.

Of course, that was before he'd discovered the joy of actually _having someone beneath him_.

Of having _Light Yagami_ beneath him. Light, moth-flame-boy; brilliant as he was beautiful, and so enchanting, oh, ever so.

Dangerous, being a suspect; dangerous, but alluring, like the thrilling promise of the enchanted needle or poison apple.

Snow White had bitten into that apple's flesh herself; Aurora's fingertip had descended onto the spindle of her own volition – entranced as she was, Maleficent had not seized her wrist and forced the needle beneath her skin, nor indeed had the Wicked Queen shoved the apple down Snow White's throat.

They had held out Death, but either princess could have turned away from it, had she chosen to. It was truth indeed – clear and pure as polished mirror glass – that they had sought their own destruction.

L could turn away now – leave the spindle or apple be. It was not written in prophecy that he should follow that green light – that he should reach for and follow _Light_ – to his own doom.

It was his choice and his alone if he allowed Light to be the death of him.

* * *

He didn't notice Rem.

She'd passed through, not intending to stay long – just long enough to glance at his lifespan and note how many days he had left. Just long enough to glance over his shoulder at his laptop screen, see what he was working on, see if it was connected in any way to Misa.

Rem had no idea what Light Yagami was planning, but she had no trust for the boy at all. She still took it upon herself, therefore, to monitor Misa's safety from the detective who wasn't so willing to let go of his suspicion.

She stopped up in puzzlement, however, when she slipped through the wall of the dark bedroom. She found the detective on the bed, and was struck by the fact that he seemed to be sitting properly, not perched in that ridiculous position she'd observed today in the investigation office. Sitting properly, with his knees bent and his bare feet flat on the sheets; almost doubled over, his head dipped and his shoulders heaving, and she could hear his heavy breathing, threaded through with small moans and shot with gasps; and though she was confused, she didn't dare go any nearer to him, lest he see her.

She was surprised he hadn't noticed her already – he seemed to have an incredibly sharp eye and knife-like senses, but then again, he seemed rather preoccupied with… _whatever_ it was that he was doing…

Though as she skulked in the darkness, listening to him, wondering what it was that he could be doing, since she'd never seen a human behave in this way before, and incidentally, it seemed rather strange for this particular human to be doing… _whatever_, since he seemed utterly devoid of feelings; his panting got heavier, and she heard him utter… something… yes, he was gasping something, something broken and breathless, another language…?

English – it sounded like English…

And then he said "Light".

No honorary; no indication, really, as to whether he was referring to Light Yagami or merely the English word "light".

But he said _Light_.

And then, even as she still remained there, floating and suspended like a ghost, he straightened up, sat up almost straight, and she heard something in his back pop, due to his preferred dreadful posture, and then he lay back on the mattress, head on the pillow, but still with his knees bent and feet on the bedclothes, his toenails scraping at the fabric and the arch of his instep flexing…

She could see quite clearly what he was doing now. His jeans were unzipped and his boxers were unbuttoned and though masturbation wasn't something Shinigamis indulged in, given the way their bodies had adapted and developed, and though she'd never seen a human do this before—

Oh, she knew what he was doing.

And that he was doing it with Light Yagami's name on his lips.

What kind of human _was_ this man, to lock Light Yagami up, to openly threaten that he still suspected that there was a chance that he might be Kira; and then slope off alone and indulge in self-gratification while thinking about him? Of course, by this point, Rem knew that detective and suspect had something of a history – she'd seen the evidence herself last night, and _heard_ it after leaving.

She left again tonight, neglecting to even observe the detective's shortening lifespan.

Humans did so disgust her.

* * *

He didn't know what had driven him to it. It was something else that he'd always scorned so; looked down upon.

He'd told Light as much, hadn't he? And despite his later neglect of most of his pre-Love-Affair-with-Light-kun notions, this was one he'd never broken.

Not that he'd _needed_ to, exactly.

But now, Light-less; driven mad, apparently, after being without him for only a few hours…

He'd glared at the discarded phone for a while; before rolling over onto his back and gazing up at the ceiling and trying to think about the case; thinking about Higuchi and the Death Note and how Light apparently _wasn't_ Kira, and that was just great except L wasn't _entirely_ convinced and wanted to test the Death Note, except he knew Chief Yagami would never allow it; and besides, what if they _did_ test it, and… and it turned out that the thirteen-day rule was fake, and then… what if it all came out as "Light Yagami _is_ Kira", and… well, that would mean L had been right, and that he'd caught Kira, but that would mean Light would be taken away, put to death, and L was suffering enough that Light had simply gone _home_, for godsakes…

And _then_ he thought that he was being stupid and selfish and that if Light was Kira, it was his duty, as L – top detective in the world – to hand him over and see that justice was served.

And _then_ he started to simply think about Light.

Thoughts which his body seemed very agreeable about, incidentally.

He'd ignored it for a while, scowling at the ceiling; since he was an expert at ignoring it.

Or _had_ been, at any rate – before he'd known what he was missing. Before Light had _shown_ him what he was missing – not exactly _lovingly_, but it had gotten the point across…

Trouble was, he'd never _fueled_ it before. Pre-Love-Affair-with-Light-kun, he'd never really been tempted by anything – such a reaction was just a natural thing, maybe just a frustrated build-up because he _wasn't_ ever tempted by anything. And since he wasn't thinking about "tempting" things, it eventually just went away on its own. Even when he'd begun to develop what he thought might be sexual feelings for Light, he still hadn't channeled them into anything productive when this problem arose.

But _now_… Well, this was the first night in close to two-and-a-half months that he hadn't had _other_ things to occupy himself with, be it Light's hand or mouth or ass; and incidentally, recalling such things only made the problem a _lot_ worse, so much that it was decidedly uncomfortable, and he almost couldn't help his hand sliding down over his stomach, fingers spread, for his palm to press against the bulge in his jeans. And when even _that_ stole his breath, he knew he could either haul himself up and go stand under an icy shower for twenty minutes, which didn't sound terribly appealing, or he could be a hypocrite and jerk himself off.

_(And that was the cheerleading squad calling out for an "H!" and a "Y!" and a "P!" as he unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans… Cause if you can't beat 'em, beat yourself—)_

He'd sat up as he started to touch himself; sat up _properly_, the way Light was always bitching at him to… the way _Light_ was… and, oh, _Light_—

He'd gotten lost very easily in it; fallen beneath the incredible sensation of it and quite happily drowned there, _poisoned_, perhaps; blind and deaf and entranced, fingers outstretched, led on by blind guidance in the form of green light—

Of _Light_—

And he'd spoken a mantra; dull, breathless words, meaningless English, his Japanese lost and forgotten at this moment, but even _he_ couldn't comprehend what he was saying, there was no correlation, nothing forming a sentence, only one word made any sense at all:

_Light_.

He hadn't seen Rem enter.

He hadn't seen Rem leave.

And when he'd finally spilled himself over his hand and his heaving stomach, he hadn't screamed and cried out or groaned, he'd only said one thing, breathless and shaking:

_Light_.

* * *

He'd fallen asleep, apparently; because he woke up sprawled on his stomach, clutching the pillow. The room was still dark and he still felt rather drained from his little Happy Half Hour earlier, so he couldn't have been asleep for very long.

He'd cleaned himself up and was fully dressed again, and leaned over the side of the bed to fish for his phone to see the time. He hooked it between his finger and thumb and lifted it up in front of his face to read the display.

3:47am.

He buried his face in the pillow again for a while, sighing deeply, lifting his feet from the mattress and rubbing them together in midair restlessly.

The fact that Light wasn't here was driving him mad – but the fact that it _was_ driving him mad was driving him even madder.

Madder…? Was that even a _word_?

He said it in English and frowned, noting that it didn't sound right. Mad, maddening, madness… _Those_ were all words, but _madder_?

It proved to be an interesting distraction for all of two-and-a-half seconds; at which L reached up and gripped at handfuls of his fine ebony hair as though he felt that tearing it out would make him feel better.

He settled for messing it up even more than the disarray it usually sat in; then got up, retrieved his cell phone from the pillow and padded softly across the room to the desk.

It was set against the wall between the window and the closet, used as more of a shelf than a work surface. Some of Light's clutter was still scattered on it, tossed back there unceremoniously after being brushed to the floor three nights ago when L had fucked the boy against the surface of it.

Light had protested at first – because there was a mirror above the desk, and Light seemed to have this thing with mirrors – which L didn't understand, because to call Light Yagami shy was like saying "Misa Amane is naturally blonde".

A big fucking _lie_ (though still not quite as ludicrous as _seriously_ suggesting that Matsuda was the First Kira).

And perhaps it had produced a rather odd effect; there'd been a mirror image of them then, going at it with enough power to make the desk shake. Another Light being screwed brainless by another L.

L clambered up onto the desk now and perched there, back in his usual position, and observed his reflection; so pale that even in the dark he could see himself, though the display from his phone contributed to the chalky glow. Mussing up his hair hadn't done his appearance any favors, incidentally – he was beginning to look unnervingly like Edward Scissorhands…

Or, well…

Same old L; hair black as ebony and skin white as snow, eyes dark as coal and still so thin despite his age and the amount he ate—

But _not_ the same.

He knew it now. He'd fallen into the very trap that he had told Light he would never be ensnared by, and only now, Light torn away from him, could he acknowledge the severe damage.

Perhaps he truly _had_ been poisoned after all.

He'd fallen in love with Light; and he had stopped looking for Kira. He hadn't noticed at the time, trekking down to the investigation office every morning with the boy after a night's worth of extremely unprofessional naughtiness between them, and sitting at their respective computers and dragging up all the clues and data and information, but—

It was true. His mind had wandered from the task at hand, valuable investigation time being devoured by hours in Light's arms (and in his pants, admittedly), and though they had seemed like hours well spent at the time, what had he left to show for them? He had no suspects at all, no leads, _nothing_.

He still looked the same – but inside, felt as though he barely recognized himself anymore. The reason L got results was because he was able to distance himself from human thinking – and now he was all entangled with stupid emotions of his own, cut up and open by Light Yagami, the only person he'd ever loved and…

…been loved by…

He wasn't even sure if he could believe _that_ anymore; and then was sickened by himself, because the thought that Light hadn't ever loved him actually _upset_ him…

Watari had tried to warn him of this, hadn't he? That morning, almost a month ago… Watari had called him on the phone, and tried to warn him of this, obviously Watari had been far quicker to notice the changes in the man he had brought up.

And L hadn't listened to him. L had ignored him. L had been very rude to him about it, actually.

Why?

Because he was in love with Light. Because he was in fucking _love_ with a teenage boy he had suspected – and _still_ suspected – of being Kira, and Watari had warned him about this, and he hadn't listened because he hadn't _wanted_ to listen because he _loved_ the little bastard.

Barely realizing he was doing it, and still gazing motionlessly at his snow-white-ebony-black reflection, L flipped open his phone and speed-dialed Watari.

"Ryuzaki?" Watari asked in English after only two rings.

L waited a long time before softly replying;

"…Yeah."

"What's the matter? Do you want me to bring you something?"

"Hm? Oh, no, thankyou, Watari."

"Then what's wrong?"

"I…" L trailed off again, unable to get his voice into gear. "…Nothing…"

"_Nothing_?"

"Yeah. It's nothing. I'm sorry. Goodnight."

L snapped his phone shut again, sighing deeply; before getting down off the desk and sitting in the chair.

Sitting _properly_. Deductive reasoning could get fucked, for all L cared at the moment…

He rested his head on the desk, glancing at his phone as it lit up; the display told him, before the Mozart ringtone began to go off, that Watari was calling him back, obviously concerned.

L turned it off and tossed it to the floor.

Light. What was it, really? Nothing but electromagnetic radiation of visible wavelength contributing to the sense of sight, and composed merely of photons.

It was substance; but it was unfathomable, uncatchable, untouchable.

Light was nothing.

And nothing was the matter.

* * *

The following day went by much the same; Light flounced in by his father's side instead of L's, dressed in a tan-colored cable-knit jumper and jeans, his brown eyes bright from an apparent good night's sleep. Probably the first full eight hours he'd had for about four months…

He didn't ignore L – he even brought him a cup of coffee at one point; and asked him for the date, muttering "Oh, of course," to L's dull reply of "It is the thirtieth of October, Light-kun," – but neither did he make any special effort in communicating with him. There were no secret glances that promised to stay over that night, no naughty little grins, no accidentally-on-purpose touches; in fact, by lunchtime, L was beginning to think that he'd gone completely mad and _imagined_ his relationship with Light this past month-and-a-half.

At 1:20pm, Light got up and said he was going to use the bathroom; at which L, more out of sheer _habit_ than anything else, automatically hopped from his chair as well and started to follow him.

Light himself either didn't notice or didn't mind, since he didn't offer any kind of protest.

Chief Yagami, however, grabbed L's skinny elbow as he passed him.

"Why are you following him, Ryuzaki?" He asked quietly. "He's been cleared. You promised that the surveillance of him was over."

L didn't really know why he was following Light – he supposed it was just bred into him by now, given the chain fiasco, to follow the boy, and in turn expect to be followed; and maybe there was a little desperation there too, hoping that if he and Light were alone again, the boy would offer some – _any_ – indication that L hadn't gone crazy and been dancing around in Imaginary Relationship Town of late; and anyway, even if Soichiro Yagami _had_ once been Deputy Director of the NPA, L was the best detective in the entire fucking _world_, so just who the hell did this stiff think he was grabbing?

"I need to speak with Light-kun," he replied coolly, pulling himself loose.

"Surely anything so important should be discussed in front of the entire team," Chief Yagami said, his voice suddenly equally iced-over.

Reenacting some _Romeo and Juliet_-inspired scene with Light in the middle of the investigation office didn't seem like a particularly stellar idea, was L's opinion; though, to be perfectly fair, Soichiro Yagami was a rather excellent detective himself, and was most likely acting oblivious to make L back off. Of course, he didn't dare openly _tell_ L to keep his mitts off his son, since a.) He had no actual proof that L had ever _had_ his mitts on his son; and b.) Again with the whole "L-was-the-best-detective-in-the-entire-fucking-_world_" thing.

So it seemed that this was his subtle way of saying "No. Freaking. _Way_.".

L didn't often find himself defeated; but he had no comeback for Chief Yagami, and nodded and muttered "Yes, you are correct, Yagami-san," and ambled off back to the computer, pretending to have gotten a text message halfway there and pulling his phone from his pocket so that he hopefully didn't look as lonely and rejected as he felt.

So preoccupied, in fact, that he didn't notice that Rem had left the room with Light.

Nor indeed that she had returned with him.

* * *

Light went home again that night and L sulked rather openly.

It should have been _his_ turn tonight; but no, Light had gone swanning off yet again, joking about with Matsuda on the way out.

L made a mental note to kick Matsuda the following morning.

He was really too pissed off to trail himself upstairs and try to sleep; and so decided to just say in the investigation office with the mainframe computer and the Death Note and the fridge and try to make some headway on the case.

Rem skulked to and fro, but aside from politely asking her if she would like any sort of refreshment (at which she blinked and replied that she wouldn't, though was as grateful as a Shinigami could be that he had offered), he largely ignored her.

Though, on that note – as the night wore on – she watched him devour two tubs of chocolate ice cream, straight from the carton, and realized that there was a reason that Misa, as a model, didn't like this guy.

By the third night, L had given up hope; he had apparently been evicted from Imaginary Relationship Town without so much as an expired tenancy warning.

They hadn't even invited him to the Halloween party.

Half an hour after everyone had left, Watari called; L let it ring for quite a while before answering it in quiet English.

"Yes, Watari?"

"Are you alright, Ryuzaki?"

"Hm? Yes, I think so."

"Are you…?" Watari trailed off, gave a small cough and tried again. "Do you want me to come up? We could… go somewhere, if you wanted."

L smiled at the offer.

"No, thankyou, Watari, though it's nice of you to ask. I'll be alright."

"Alright, if you're sure…"

"I am." L really had nothing else to say to him. "I, uh… I'll talk to you later, then, Watari."

"Yes." Watari paused again, before saying, quieter still; "…Happy birthday, L."

"Thankyou, Watari."

The detective was aware of Rem watching him as he closed the cellphone; and turned to face her on doing so.

"No doubt you heard that," he said emotionlessly.

"Yes," she said.

He offered her a bitter little smile.

"I apologize, Rem-san," he went on. "I would offer you some of my birthday cake, but I don't have one."

She gave a silent nod.

L gave a sigh and got out of his chair, crossing the floor – he had barely left the office in 36 hours, and was a little depressed, at any rate.

"Did you expect one?" Rem suddenly asked him as he opened the door.

He paused, looking back at her; surprise evident in the black mirror-mirror eyes.

"No," he confessed eventually. "I suppose not."

He left, and though he had taken the notebook with him once again, she did not follow him; though she wondered if he'd be more enthusiastic about his birthday if he knew exactly how little time he had left – if he knew that this was his last birthday ever.

L sank onto the bed in the dark, resting his cheek on the cool cover of the Death Note; his ebony hair seeming to merge into it.

Well… it was true. It wasn't like he really _had_ expected a birthday cake or a present or whatever. None of the team knew it was his birthday on Halloween – _Matsuda_ probably would have brought him something, he reasoned, had he known.

And Watari _used_ to make an effort – buying a cake and putting candles on it, getting him a small gift, but when L had turned sixteen he had said that he didn't want to celebrate his birthday anymore after that.

When Watari had inquired why of the scrawny dark-haired teenager – looking much then same then as he did now, all things considered; but for the torn jeans and black T-shirt – L had replied that he didn't feel that his birthday was a day worth celebrating.

And when Watari had begun to mildly protest, saying that of _course_ it was worth celebrating, L had interrupted and reeled off the last decade's Halloween crime figures.

"_Masks_, Watari," he had said. "On Halloween, there are more recorded murders, rapes, burglaries and car thefts than on any other night of the year. It's because people go around in costumes – there's no way of identifying them. Many of them get away with their crimes. Even the most cowardly can kill from behind an invented persona."

Watari had only nodded, having no argument; and noting that the following morning, on the front page of the newspaper, it was reported that two girls out trick-or-treating had been raped and strangled, their bodies found in an alleyway, somewhere in South London only the previous night.

"_This_," the teenaged L had said, lifting the paper in his peculiar manner, "is nothing to celebrate."

He still felt that way. He _really_ didn't like Halloween – and often wondered if had been some sick joke of his parents', for him to have come into the world on that day.

And yet… he still felt a little depressed that his birthday had been utterly ignored. Not that he could blame the investigation team, since they didn't know.

But _Light_ knew.

And though L himself didn't really care about his birthday, this was the first year that he had hoped that maybe someone _else_ (other than Watari) would.

Perhaps Light had simply forgotten. It had been several weeks ago, when L had mentioned his birth date, and now that Mr Popular Top-Score Tokyo University Student had his own life back, he probably had Halloween parties left, right and center to attend.

L thought he might read something; but ended up simply sliding the Death Note out from beneath his head and staring at it long and hard in the dark. He was grimly fascinated by it – a simple notebook, yet quite possibly the worst murder weapon in the history of mankind.

Rem was very frustrating. She would politely answer his questions, but the information she gave was always spare and lacking anything that was truly helpful. She didn't seem to dislike him particularly, but L could tell that she wasn't altogether especially interested in helping him solve the case. She kept talking about the 'owner' of the notebook, though would never elaborate further.

L wondered who the owner of the notebook was at this moment. It obviously no longer belonged to Higuchi, since he was dead – so did that mean that the ownership had been passed onto someone else? Who, then? Though L was the one who had the Death Note at the moment, and had been clinging to it for almost the entire time since it had come their way, he had concluded that the owner could not be him, since Rem wouldn't part with much of the information that he asked her for.

Maybe it didn't have an owner at the moment? Maybe Rem had to choose who she would give it to next?

Or perhaps… the new owner was the next to use the notebook to kill someone?

And no-one had used it since Higuchi's death.

L opened the notebook to the last used page, running his fingertips over the last name written in Higuchi's hand. He was aching to test it, so that he could know which of the rules written into the front and back inside covers were lies and which were truth. After all, they'd been written by death gods, and that meant that it was distinctly possible that they weren't all real.

Still… what could he do? It was unethical to toy with human lives just to test the Death Note out. If the thirteen-day rule _was_ for real, he'd be sentencing someone to murdering every thirteen days for the rest of their life. It simply wasn't to be done.

The detective reached across to the bedside table and picked up a pen, poising it delicately above the open notebook. Truthfully, there was absolutely _nothing_ right now stopping him from quietly testing it himself. Nobody was going to grab his wrist and pull the pen from his fingers, or take the Death Note from him.

Perhaps if he used it, the notebook would become his, and Rem would be forced to tell him whatever he desired to know.

But… he had no-one he could kill.

_A criminal_, his mind supplied; though he was quick to flatten and obliterate that dangerous little suggestion. After all, wasn't that _Kira's_ mindset exactly…?

Besides… He gave a sigh and dropped the pen, lying down on the sheets once more. He was just being stupid, grasping desperately at the frayed threads of ideas for lack of anything better. Say he used the notebook, killed someone, the thirteen-day rule _was_ real, he died thirteen days from now…

Well, it would make Light and Misa innocent; but that would mean that the _real_ First and Second Kiras would still be out there, and that L himself would be rather too dead to do anything about it.

It was a ridiculously foolish and dangerous gamble, and one not worth taking; and that aside, he had no-one to kill anyway.

And then, as he sulked in silence, there was a knock on the bedroom door.

L blinked and lifted his head, puzzled. Watari, perhaps? Had he come up anyway, with tea or cake or something? He slithered off the bed and crossed the floor, not even annoyed that the elderly man had defied him, since he was feeling so lonely.

He mussed his ebony hair tiredly as he opened the door; blinking in surprise and knocked speechless when he found not Watari standing there, but Light Yagami.

Light, in jeans, a black low-necked, long-sleeved top and a grey zipped hooded jacket; clutching a convenience store bag, his auburn hair a little windswept, and smiling.

"Light-kun," L said finally, his hand dropping from his hair to his side.

"Yeah," Light replied. He held up the bag. "It's your birthday, right?"

L only nodded, still just standing there holding the door open; and eventually Light lowered the bag again, his smile faltering a little.

"Um, so… Can I come in?"

L blinked his wide black eyes; and then stood back and wordlessly to let Light enter, at which the boy shot him a puzzled look.

"Hey, why is it so dark in here?" Light asked as the door swung shut again.

_Because there's no Light…_

The teenager crossed to the bedside and flicked on the lamp, illuminating half of the room.

"That's better," he said, dropping the bag onto the bedclothes and unzipping his jacket; pausing halfway through shrugging out of it to glance at L, who was still over by the door. "Are you just going to stand there, Ryuzaki?"

L moved further into the room at Light's words, twisting his thin fingers together awkwardly; he was pleased to see the teen, but since he'd never really ever felt this much joy from someone's arrival in his presence, he wasn't quite sure how he should react to it.

Besides, he'd never had to deal with Light in this way before – with him coming in from outside, as though they'd arranged a date or something. They'd always been chained together, constantly in each other's company, and Light hadn't been here five minutes ago and now he _was_, and L felt dreadfully undermined in power right now and didn't know what to do with himself—

"Won't your father be angry that you came here?" The detective asked finally, unable to think of anything else to say.

Light gave a small snort.

"He doesn't know. I told him I was going out to a Halloween party."

"_Don't_ you have a Halloween party to attend?" L pressed.

"Six," Light replied airily. He glanced at L in puzzlement. "Why? Do you want me to leave?"

L's eyes widened a little.

"No," he said quickly. "I just thought… well, you've finally been freed… I thought perhaps you might prefer to spend time with your friends tonight."

Light arched an eyebrow.

"You're kidding, right? I don't _have_ any friends, Ryuzaki. You know that."

"You are very popular, Light-kun. At the university, I mean."

"It's not the same as being friends with someone."

"What about Amane-san?"

"Misa?" Light thought for a moment. "Oh, yeah. Some company hired some of the models at Misa's agency to dress up in costumes for their party tonight. Some fairytale theme or something."

"What is Misa-san's costume?"

Light paused for a moment, as though debating lying, before finally admitting:

"…Snow White."

"Doesn't Snow White have _black_ hair, Light-kun?"

"Yeah." Light glanced at L again. "She does." Then he gave a shrug. "I dunno, Misa was whining about some other girl getting to be Sleeping Beauty even though Misa's blonde and this other girl isn't… I kind of stopped listening."

"Oh."

Light frowned at L.

"You okay? You're acting kind of… odd."

L nodded vaguely.

"Yes, I'm alright, Light-kun. I'm just surprised to see you…"

Light gave tiny laugh.

"Did you think I'd forgotten your birthday, Ryuzaki?"

L blinked at him; before looking away and confessing:

"_Yes_."

Light offered him a small smile.

"Well, I didn't." He pointed to the bag. "I even brought you stuff."

L finally came over to Light; and everything was so painfully different. With Light chained to his wrist as his suspect, he had felt in control, felt confident that he could paw Light around easily – but now that Light had the power to leave, come and go as he pleased… it seemed different.

As though _Light_ was the one with the power now.

_(Since Light had screamed, everything seemed… different…)_

"I brought you a cake," Light said, about to turn away to fish it from the bag; but didn't get that far, as L suddenly threw his arms around Light's neck and embraced him tightly.

Light was startled, since he'd never seen L behave this way before; he'd never been so clingy or needy or… _desperate_…

_Or human._

"Who are you and what have you done with Ryuzaki?" Light joked feebly, patting L on the back.

"Don't, Light-kun." L squeezed him tighter still. "I'm glad… you came. I thought you didn't care anymore. I thought… it was all… _over_."

Or perhaps the more appropriate question then was "Who are you and what have you done with _L_?"…

Light gave a small laugh.

"Okay, first of all, I think being deprived of sex for two days has driven you crazy," he said. "I mean, look at you, acting all melodramatic… This totally isn't like you, you know."

"I _missed_ you, Light-kun," L replied, something fiercely defiant in his voice.

"No." Light finally pried L off and pushed him back a little so that they were face to face. "You thought I didn't want you anymore. You thought I'd ditched you. Well? Isn't that right?"

L was silent for a while before simply nodding; reduced almost to a child before Light's spot-on accusations.

Light gave a small sigh, brushing a few thorns of L's ebony hair from his eyes.

"Ryuzaki," he said patiently, "you're not stupid. You _know_ why I've had to brush you off since you let me go. My dad… I mean, I don't know if he knows that we… well, you know… He hasn't _said_ anything, exactly, but… He keeps saying my name, like he wants to ask me something, but when I answer him, he just sighs and says "It doesn't matter". And I hadn't seen my mother or Sayu in ages. I couldn't hang around here. You _know_ that."

L gave an offish shrug.

"Yes, I do, but… I can't _help_ it. Isn't it only natural that I would want you to myself?"

Light blinked at him.

"You've had me to yourself for, what… four _months_?"

"That doesn't satisfy me."

"That's too bad," Light replied testily. "I'm not a _thing_. You can't just lock me away like a prisoner."

"I don't want to keep you as a prisoner," L argued, suddenly sounding desperate; as though he could sense the annoyance in Light's tone and was terrified that he would leave now that he had the means to. "I… I just want you to stay."

"Ryuzaki…" Light kneaded his forehead with his fingertips. "This isn't a _game_, okay? Maybe we were just playing around while we were chained together, but this isn't some silly fairytale. I can't just stay here and live happily ever after with you."

L gazed at him for a moment or two.

"You could if I put the handcuffs back on," he said quietly.

"_On what grounds_?" Light snapped, hackles immediately raised.

"On the grounds that neither you nor Amane are entirely free from suspicion. The notebook hasn't been tested—"

"Ryuzaki, _shut up_," Light interrupted angrily, grabbing hold of the detective's shoulders, hard. "I came here because I didn't want to you to be alone on your birthday; _not_ so you could accuse me of being Kira even though it's been _proven_ that I'm _not_."

L was quiet for a while, before simply asking:

"Will you stay tonight?"

"Do you want me to?"

"Yes."

"Yes, then."

"Okay." L pulled right away from Light and went to the bed, stepping onto it and then sinking into his preferring sitting position; crossing his arms over his chest and clutching at his own shoulders with his white, spider-like hands, all the while watching Light expectantly, dark eyes aglow with something mesmerizing and unreadable.

Light sat on the sheets himself, going into the bag once again and pulling out the cardboard box with the cake in it. He lifted the lid off and held it out to show it to L.

"Here," he said. "I know a cake isn't much of a novelty for you, but… I thought you might like one. It's not strawberry, but…"

"That's alright, Light-kun," L said, smiling at first the cake and then the teenager. "I like chocolate cake too. Thankyou very much."

He leaned across towards Light, as though for a kiss; though the boy recoiled from him with a sudden naughty grin, waving a finger chidingly.

"Nuh uh," he said impishly. "None of that until you blow out the candles."

L blinked at him, glancing at the cake in puzzlement.

"Which candles, Light-kun?" He asked, genuinely perplexed.

"It's okay, I brought some." Light went back into the bag and pulled out two new birthday candles. "I could only find two. I don't think we have twenty-five candles at home…"

He sank the thin wax sticks deep into the rich chocolate icing, then brought out a lighter and swiftly set them flickering. He and L sat and watched the twin flames dance and manipulate leaping shadows across the room for a moment or two in silence.

"Well?" Light asked finally, sounding cross. "I'm not singing, you know."

L looked up, even smirking a little.

"No, I suppose that would be asking a bit much from you, Light-kun; and after you went to all this trouble…"

Light gave a small snort.

"Okay, well… make a wish…"

"Very well." L paused over the cake for a moment, his head tilted to one side. "I wish that—"

"_No_!" Light interrupted. "Ryuzaki… If you say it out loud, it won't come true!"

"Ah, that is a theory that I wish to test, Light-kun."

Light rolled his brown eyes.

"_Fine_…"

"I wish," L started again, his gazed fixated on Light and Light alone; the fire of the candles dancing in his dark mirror eyes, "that Light-kun would kiss me."

He neatly blew the candles out and leaned across again, his expression very serious.

"A successful experiment?"

Light's own expression was thoroughly deadpan when he shot back;

"You have a one-track mind, you know that?"

He granted L's wish (like the Fairy Godmother unto poor little Cinderella, forgotten by all) with a soft and chaste, but loving, kiss; though smirked on pulling back.

"I'm surprised," he said. "I thought you would have wished for something a little more…"

"…Perverted?" L offered flatly.

"I was going to say 'adventurous'," Light answered, "but yeah; 'perverted' works fine too…"

"Do you think I wasted my wish?"

"I'd probably have kissed you anyway, so… yeah." Light stuck out his tongue. "Too bad." He reached back into the bag a third time and pulled out a table knife and some napkins. "I have a present for you too, but would you like some cake first?"

L smiled, enjoying this game.

"Okay." He watched Light sink the knife into the cake, carving out something that could only be categorized as a wedge, rather than the dainty slices Watari was so good at cutting. "You're spoiling me, Light-kun."

"Well…" Light winched the slice free with a napkin and handed it to the detective. "…It's your _birthday_."

"Mm." L licked at the crests of chocolate icing decorating the top of his slice of cake. "I don't usually celebrate."

"I kind of figured that." Light looked up at him. "What's the matter? Too spooky for you?"

"Something like that." And when Light blinked at him, the detective went on; "A vast figure of people worldwide are murdered, raped and robbed on Halloween, and the perpetrators are often never caught, because they wear Halloween costumes, making them unidentifiable."

"Murderers hiding behind masks," Light said softly. "Kind of like Kira."

"Yes." L tilted his head, chewing thoughtfully on a mouthful of chocolate cake. "Exactly like Kira, Light-kun."

His gaze moved to the cake again, staring at it absently.

"What?" Light asked, puzzled.

"Will you cut another slice, Light-kun?"

Light blinked.

"Why? You haven't finished _that_ one."

"I know." L took another bite of his own slice. "It's not for me."

Frowning, Light did as requested; his frown deepening further still when L wrapped the piece in a napkin and got off the bed.

"Where are you going?"

"I'll be back in a moment." L paused at the door, looking back at the brunette. "You… won't leave?"

"I promise," Light replied, still looking greatly perplexed. "Ill be right here."

L nodded and left the room; and surely he must be slipping in his razor-sharp skill, for he left Light unattended with the Death Note open on the bed, pen just beyond it – and furthermore, thought nothing of it.

He found Rem loitering in the darkened investigation office and approached her, his bare feet noiseless on the linoleum.

"Rem-san?"

She looked up at him, her eyes immediately darting – as they always seemed to – to the spot just above his head. Ignoring her odd behavior, L put the cake down on the coffee table.

"I have a birthday cake now," he said dully. "And I said I would offer you some if I did."

Rem's yellow eyes slid down from where she was apparently admiring an invisible tiara or something, meeting with L's ebony ones.

"Light Yagami," she said after a long while, "brought it for you."

"Yes."

"You are strange," Rem went on. "You accuse Light Yagami of being Kira, yet trust him enough to eat cake that he has brought for you. If you believe that he is capable of being a murderer, don't you think that he may have poisoned it?"

L blinked; it actually _hadn't_ occurred to him, and come to think of it, Light _had_ 'poisoned' him before, hadn't he?

"I trust," he said finally, "that even if Light-kun _was_ Kira, he would not kill me in such a base and unsophisticated manner – and one that is so easily traceable back to himself as the culprit."

"Yet you do not trust that he is most definitely not Kira."

"I have no choice. I cannot determine one hundred per cent whether he is innocent, Rem-san."

"You are very hypocritical." She said it with terrible conviction, and L took that as his cue to leave and return upstairs.

"Enjoy the cake, Rem-san," he said flatly, turning away and beginning to shuffle off, hands in his pockets.

"Were it not for the fact that I know my eyes do not lie to me," Rem said out of nowhere as the detective reached the door, "I would question whether or not you are truly human."

He looked sharply back at her.

"Eyes? He repeated, his voice stabbing through the dark like a knife. "And you're a _Shinigami_…"

"I cannot tell you what you wish to know," Rem replied, intercepting his thoughts. "The notebook is not yours."

"How do I _make_ it mine?"

"I cannot tell you that either." And then, seeing him scowl, she went on; "There are laws that even Shinigami must abide by."

"I see." L gave a nod and left, not caring whether she ate the cake or not.

"Ryuzaki," Light said, when L entered the bedroom again, glancing at the floor as he did so; the detective looked up on hearing his pseudonym.

Light was standing in the middle of the bedroom floor, the Death Note in one hand and the pen in the other.

"What were you doing?" He asked quietly.

L blinked at him, floored for a moment or two.

"Nothing, Light-kun."

"_Nothing_," Light repeated icily, "with a killer notebook and a pen."

"I wasn't actually going to write anything in it. I was merely hypothesizing."

"About what?" Light snapped. "_Testing_ it?"

L shrugged his slender shoulders.

"Well, I suppose it is pointless to lie. Yes, I _do_ want to test it, Light-kun."

"For _what_?" Light blazed, throwing the Death Note to the floor. "So you can chase your suspicions of Misa and I even further? _Why_ aren't you satisfied? Do you _want_ me to be Kira, Ryuzaki?"

"No," L replied, "_no_, Light-kun; I _don't_ want you to be Kira. That's why I want to test it."

"Oh, you're _unbelievable_," Light sighed frustratedly, sinking down onto the bed. "…Using all this relationship garbage as a _reason_ for—"

"_No_!" L interrupted, sounding terribly agitated. He picked up the Death Note, holding it out away from his body. "Light-kun, I once told you… that even if I _did_ expect that perhaps you would confide in me your guilt, were you Kira, and were we to pursue a relationship of this nature… It would not mean that the love I profess for you is not real. You have to believe that, even if it's hard for you to hear."

L rubbed at his hair frustratedly, swinging the notebook two and fro between his thumb and forefinger.

"I _don't_ want you to be Kira," he went on quietly, his voice strained, almost whining. "That's _why_ I want to test this horrible thing, Light-kun – so I can _know_ for certain whether or not you're Kira."

"And what would you do," Light asked darkly, "if I _was_ Kira?"

L halted, as though suddenly frozen by Light's words; blinking once at him.

"Are you… _confessing_…?"

"No!" Light snapped. "I am _not Kira_, Ryuzaki! I just want to know what you'd do if I _was_."

"I… I don't know," L said distractedly, shifting again; seemingly unable to stand still. "I don't know what I'd do. I'd… I'd _have_ to… turn you in, I suppose…"

"_But would you_?" Light pressed.

"Light-kun," L said tiredly, "I have to say, it sounds _very_ much like you are attempting to confess your guilt…"

"This is just hypothetical interrogation," Light spat. "What's _happened_ to you, Ryuzaki? What about Justice, and—"

"_Don't preach to me_," L hissed, suddenly getting very angry with the boy. He tossed the Death Note onto the bed. "You ask what's happened to me? _You're_ what's happened to me." His black mirror eyes met Light's chocolate ones. "Do you think I'm some _symbol _of Justice, Light-kun? Nothing but an 'L' on a computer screen? Incorruptible and untaintable?" The detective forced a bitter laugh out from some dark depth of his soul. "If _only_ it were that simple – but I am human, Light-kun. I'm sorry if I don't seem that way to you at times, but it's the truth."

Light had no answer for him; and L turned away from him, still pacing and restless and agitated.

"I mean," he said, speaking more to himself now, "this is an utterly ridiculous situation. We're involved in a sexual relationship with deeply emotional ties; _I'm_ a detective, _you're_ a suspect. How can it even be assumed that I would be able to judge you in the detached manner that I should exhibit?"

"You're… you're not thinking about dropping the case, are you?" Light asked, taken aback.

"How can I?" L replied wearily. "What excuse could I give that wouldn't bring all this out into the open and destroy us both? And if you aren't Kira… then I would have left the case for a meaningless reason."

L sank down onto the bedclothes silently, sitting properly and resting his elbows on his thighs, leaning forward to accommodate still for his awful posture. Light watched him, surprised by his unorthodox (for him) way of sitting; watching him dip his dark head.

"Do you… want me to go?" He asked softly after a while.

L glanced at him through his hair.

"No," he replied, his voice equally quiet. "That's the problem. You probably _should_ go, Light-kun, but I don't want you to. Please… _stay_. You promised that you would."

Light gave a small nod; and then, after a long, terse moment between them, reached into the bag a fourth and final time and extracted the slim present, wrapped in black tissue paper and tied prettily with a silver ribbon.

"Do you want this, then?" He asked, offering it out.

L looked up at him again, blinking.

"Light-kun… you didn't have to buy me a present," he said after a while, daintily taking it.

"I…" Light averted his eyes. "I don't think… you're going to like it…"

"Why wouldn't I like your present?" L asked, plucking the ribbon loose with his thin fingers.

"Because…" Light gave an abashed shrug, looking at the wall as L tore the paper away from the gift.

"Oh." L pushed the black tissue paper away from the present. "I see."

"I'm… _sorry_."

"Light-kun," L asked, lifting the gift up in the same way he did everything else, "why did you buy me a notebook? Is it… some kind of _joke_…?"

"No!" Light cried, looking sharply at L; his brown eyes wide and imploring. "It's… it's not meant to be like that, I just… I got Sayu to buy it for you, while we were still chained together. I didn't think I'd be free by the time your birthday came around, so I sent her a text. She wrapped it, too – you could probably tell I didn't wrap it…"

"Why a notebook?" L pressed, his gaze unwavering.

"It was before I knew about the Death Note, I swear. Sayu bought it like a week before we caught Higuchi. I… I just noticed that you tend to use scrap bits of paper to write details down on. I-I guess I thought that you'd like… somewhere to properly write everything down."

"I see." L looked down at the notebook – it was thick and heavy, covered with royal blue suede and edged with silver.

It didn't look remotely like the Death Note, in all honesty.

"It's nice," he said finally.

"Sayu picked it."

"She has good taste."

"You… like it?" Light breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. I thought you were going to flip out over it…"

"I should." L stroked the notebook's soft cover. "I really should…"

"Here." Light took it from him and picked up the pen lying discarded on the sheets; he flipped the notebook open and started to write something, tilting it up out of L's view when he tried to lean across and see.

"There," the teen said after a moment, turning it around with a flourish; on the first page, in his sharp, neat kanji, he'd written _'Happy birthday, Ryuzaki'_, with a little smiley face next to it.

L gave a small smile, and took the notebook and pen himself and wrote in return _'Thankyou, Light'_, without the honorary.

After reading it, Light took the notebook again and wrote something else; though thought for a moment before laying pen to paper, and when he turned it around, it became apparent why he had done so.

He'd written _'I love you'_ in English.

To which L replied, in English, _'I believe you'_.

Light kissed him; and L responded to it for a moment or two, before breaking free and scrawling something else down on the page of the notebook, reverting back to Japanese.

Light scowled upon reading it; for it said '_I want to be on top'_.

"No way," he said sharply. "I've kept track of the days. It should be _my_ turn tonight."

"But I missed my turn last night," L protested.

"And I missed mine the night before."

"But it's my _birthday_," L pouted.

"I know." Light gave him another fleeting kiss and said nothing more.

The kiss had barely deepened and their hands had barely begun to wander, however, before Light's cellphone went off in his pocket.

"Misa-san," L grumbled irritably. "Ignore her…"

Light checked the caller ID anyway; and swore sharply under his breath.

"It's my dad," he breathed. He shoved L completely away as he flipped the phone open, shooting the detective a warning glance. "Hey, dad."

"Light." Soichiro Yagami paused. "Where are you?"

"At a Halloween party. I told you."

"I can't hear any noise."

"I came outside to answer your call."

"Light… are you _sure_?"

"Yes. Jeez, dad, where else do you think I'd be on Halloween?"

"I… I don't know. It doesn't matter. Just don't be back too late, okay?"

"I know, I know. I'll be home soon."

L watched the boy balefully as he finished up the clipped conversation with his father and flipped the phone shut again.

"He is persistent," he noted coldly. "Does he think I am leading you astray?"

"Something like that, I think." Light rubbed at his hair, getting up. "Look, um… maybe I shouldn't stay here. Dad'll probably suspect something if I don't go home—"

"No!" L grabbed Light's wrist, holding it in his cold steel grip. "Don't leave." Something in his dark eyes flared jealously. "Don't you _dare_ leave…"

…_Me…_

"You're doing it _again_!" Light snapped, attempting to pull his wrist loose. "Trying to keep me here as your prisoner! Let me go!"

"_No_." L reached out, grasping the front of Light's top and twisting it in his thin fingers. "Don't go. You promised you'd stay. Please, please stay, Light-kun…"

Light looked down at him; at how desperate the detective had become, _anything_ for Light to simply stay and be with him, to illuminate the overwhelming darkness that was his loneliness and confusion at how fucked up everything had become.

The antidote to the poison was apparently the poison itself.

"I'm on top, then," was all Light said eventually.

L's dark eyes widened a little at the conditions of the bargain; something in his snow-white face flickered, as though he was debating refusing, risking even Light turning on his heel and walking out, simply for the sake of refusing to be the receiver…

"Alright," he agreed quietly, his grip on the boy tightening further still. "Just promise you'll stay."

"You have my word."

Light sank back to the bedclothes; switching his phone off and tossing it to the floor. He straddled L, pushed him to his back on the mattress, bent down to kiss him, auburn entangling with ebony. L met him on that battlefield, tormented for Light's touch, poisoned by the boy in the worst possible way – the way that left him wanting more, never satisfied.

Light was quick to peel off his own black top, tugging it off over his head, shaking the static from his hair on throwing it to the floor, and if only daddy could see him now at his "Halloween party", getting naked with stupid, needy L underneath him…

L didn't seem to be in any sort of hurry to remove his own top, so Light just left it, going for the jeans instead; unbuttoning, unzipping, pulling them down and off, allowing L's spindly fingers to work at Light's own belt as he dealt with the boxer shorts, the pesky blue boxer shorts, with their buttons that didn't want to come loose…

L was done with Light's belt and button and zipper by the time the boy had dealt with the boxers; Light discarded them and kicked off his own jeans, sliding down for a brief moment just to tease L's erection a little with his breath and his tongue, hearing the breathy moan and making a homecoming to capture his mouth. L clutched around the teen's neck, needle fingers threaded in the depths of mahogany hair; ground upwards against him, urging him almost aggressively, impatient and feeling right now that the only thing that could possibly reel him back in after storming from one emotion to the next concerning all of this…

Nothing was clear; it was all too dark.

He needed _Light_.

Light _did_ seem different, incidentally. More confident, poised… _arrogant_…

He'd used something – something lying around in one of the bedside drawers, maybe – because his entrance was slick and smooth and complete; L arched his back on the mattress, delightfully full and his eyes wider still. He was still wearing his white top, but that was something for Light to grab and twist in his grip as he started ramming himself into the detective, his expression very focused and serious.

It was hot and hard and intense, and neither of them lasted long – L maybe because he'd been going through Light withdrawal symptoms these past few days, and Light himself… Well, he seemed to have been driven by a new business-like force, at any rate, and damn if it wasn't efficient. While L was still never one to cry out and writhe around and such like during intercourse, he hadn't had a chance there to let his expression flatline.

Less than an hour later, L "negotiated" a turn of his own; in the form of jumping a half-asleep Light and not giving him much time to react.

Later still, when it was most certainly no longer Halloween, and no longer L's birthday, Light retaliated and fucked the detective again; hard and blindingly, perhaps bidden by his anger, and L murmured things to himself between broken breaths, though Light could not understand them, for his words were English, and Light was rather too preoccupied to translate them.

Except for the last word, breathed at the edge of the blade of orgasm on L's part, his ebony hair an elaborate spider's weave across the pillow and his coal-black mirror-mirror eyes glazed and glassy;

"—_Mercy_…"

* * *

_Half-asleep, intertwined tightly with the sleeping L in the first slivers of aurora, Light Yagami smiled to himself._

_L was in ruins. There was no other way of putting it. Light was a poison, laced in a chalice, which L had drank from long and deep of his own accord; committing him to a pathway that was not his chosen route._

_Perhaps he'd become entangled by his own thorns._

_Or perhaps Light indeed had never been the Wicked Queen to L's Snow White, but the poisoned apple itself; beauty belying the destruction within._

_Light had seen the degree of L's damage now. He couldn't even think straight; fluctuating from ranting about the sin of their relationship to the importance of catching Kira to begging Light to stay the night._

_This was not the L who had snapped the handcuff onto Light's wrist all those months ago. _

_Still… L was still dangerous. Misa Amane was bright enough when it suited her to be so, but she was nowhere near intelligent enough to stay ahead of L for very long, even if he __**was**__ in bits._

_Yes, Light knew that. L might be a wreck, but he was still an obstacle. Light knew he couldn't leave him alive for very much longer. _

_Still, it didn't matter. Misa was his golden key – if she couldn't remember 'Ryuga Hideki's' real name, she would surely trade with Ryuk for the Shinigami Eyes just so that she could see it and make Light happy. _

_And if all else failed, he was certain he could force Rem into action one way or another…_

_And so he lay curled snugly up with L – his enemy, his friend, his lover – and dreamily composed and concocted Death Note instructions._

_He might have him jump out of that window he had nearly fallen from all those weeks ago; or choking, though he couldn't decide if cake or an apple would be more fitting; or locking him alive into a coffin, slamming down the lid while he screamed his name and pounded upwards – maybe a __**glass**__ coffin, so that he could watch him suffocate._

_That was the power of the Death Note, after all. As long as the death itself wasn't impossible in physical terms, he could decree anything he wanted. He was really leaning towards a suicide for L, since it was the ultimate defeat by Kira's hand – for him to be ordered to concoct a way of taking his own life._

_Light in fact had a vivid half-dream of L carefully breaking a pocket mirror into little pieces, dropping the shards into his teacup the way he did sugar cubes, stirring it all up with his stupid tiny teaspoon and then drinking the entire deadly concoction, each little sliver of reflective glass slicing into him on the way down; his belly pooling with blood as he died in agony, all alone._

_Maybe it was just fueled by the mirrors he saw in L's eyes every time he looked at the detective; the ones that reflected not Light Yagami, but Kira himself._

_Maybe he'd cry for Light as he died; for someone to hold his hand, stroke his hair, hold him close._

_And Light wouldn't come._

* * *

Light had drifted off; for when he awoke, it was considerably brighter, and L was no longer in his arms.

He looked up, glancing about for L; finding him crouched at the end of the bed, fully dressed, and hunched over the cake.

"What are you doing?" Light asked sleepily, rubbing his hair.

L glanced up at him, dark eyes wide; he held up the lighter.

"Giving life to the candles again."

"Why?"

"I want another wish."

Light snorted.

"It doesn't work like that, Ryuzaki."

L shrugged.

"Well, I thought I would experiment again."

He put the lighter aside as flames licked at the candle wicks once more. Light sat up to watch him, half-interested and half-exasperated by his childish behavior.

L glanced at him, his gaze piercing.

"I wish," he whispered, "that Light-kun isn't Kira."

He blew the candles out; extinguishing the light.

And Light himself reasoned that he had nothing to feel guilty about – L had broken the rules again, after all.

Wishes spoken aloud never came true.

* * *

Princess L's main problem was that he'd been spoon-fed a relationship – he didn't know the "give-and-take" dynamics of a real love affair. He'd never been in any danger of having his ass dumped by Light because of his cruel, insensitive behavior, because Light had been chained to his wrist and couldn't very well storm off and delete L's number from his cellphone.

He'd never had to beg for forgiveness, buy Light stupid presents as a means of winning him back; likewise, he'd never been in danger of standing Light up, or showing up late for a cinema date. The relationship had been incredibly easy for L – if ever he'd wanted a kind word or a kiss or a quickie, Light was within his reach. All he had to do was grab his elbow and haul him into an empty twenty-first floor bathroom or unused mop closet.

_That_ was why L's dependence on his relationship with Light had gotten so dangerously and epically out of control – because it had all been handed to him. He really _was_ such a spoilt brat in so many ways…

…Not that Light was complaining, incidentally. Every last one of L's weaknesses could be converted to weapons, after all.

Sitting at the desk in his bedroom, Light glanced across at the bed; Misa was perched at the end of it, applying lipstick in none other than a pocket mirror, while Ryuk loitered beyond it, munching on an apple.

Studying the pretty young model, Light couldn't help but note how vastly different she was from L in every way imaginable – she was female, to begin with; blond hair to his ebony; pale blue eyes to his intense black; fitted, flattering clothes to his uninspired wardrobe; hyperactive to his deadpan lethargy; and mindless to his genius.

She'd had a shoot earlier that day, and was still dressed from the final photograph in a tiny red flared skirt edged with lace, a black satin corset-style top with puffed lacy sleeves, and opaque black sheen tights. She wore fishnet gloves on each hand, each wrist jangling with bracelets, laced-up gothic ankle boots, and at her neck resided a choker, a cross on a chain and a rosary string. Her blond hair was pulled into two full bunches, the crosses dangling from her ears glinting, and her lipstick was as red as the apple that Ryuk was inhaling; or perhaps red as blood, or a rose…

Fairest in the land…?

Certainly it took L as long to get fully dressed in the morning as it took Misa to simply paint her lips crimson.

"Misa," Light said after a long while, "I think Ryuzaki is in love with me."

Misa's head jerked up, pigtails swinging.

"What?" She pulled a face. "Ew, that pervert. Why doesn't that surprise me?"

Light smiled slightly.

"Yeah, it's gross," he agreed nonchalantly, "but it's also a good thing."

Misa leapt to her feet, heels clicking smartly on the floor; the tiny blond seemed enraged.

"How could it be _good_?!" She cried. "Light belongs to Misa! Not to icky perverted Ryuzaki…"

"It means I can predict his moves," Light replied calmly. "It means I can _get rid_ of him, Misa."

Misa's mouth became a little crimson 'o' of surprise; before she clapped her small hands together.

"Oh, and then Misa's eyes can see his real name!" She cried gleefully.

Ryuk, who had presented no input until now, broke in with a low snicker; though offered no more than that. Light scowled at him, then looked back at Misa.

"Right, Misa. Only your eyes can see the truth."

Misa's slender fingers weaved together as she clasped her hands in front of her in a show of cute imploring.

"And Misa would do _anything_ for Light," she purred.

"Hm. Though, Misa… do _not_ act until I tell you to, understood?" Light ran a hand through his auburn hair. "Ryuzaki still suspects both of us. It would be dangerous to do anything now. He still hasn't played his pieces into all the right places…"

Misa shook her head.

"I don't understand."

Light wasn't surprised, but refrained from rolling his eyes.

"Well, right now, I'm _counting_ on him suspecting me," he explained quietly. "He's confessed his feelings to me, and as good as admitted that he would be conflicted in his actions were it to become apparent that I am Kira. It's his suspicion of me that keeps him torn and confused like this. If he was to believe one hundred percent in my innocence, he would be able to think clearly. The thing that is _saving_ us at the moment, Misa, is that Ryuzaki still suspects us both."

"Is that why Misa must continue with the judgments of criminals?"

Light nodded.

"Only you can do it, Misa, as my goddess."

Misa gave a delighted little squeal, throwing herself forward and embracing Light tightly.

"Misa will carry out Light's wishes! Misa will do well! All of Misa's heart belongs to Light!" She leaned back from him with a wicked, pretty grin. "If Misa could pull out her heart and give it to Light in a box, she would do so."

"And what would I do with _that_?" Light asked testily, ignoring the major "SNOW WHITE!" red alert going off inside his skull. He looked at his watch. "Oh, hey, Misa. The last train is leaving in ten minutes. You'd better go."

Misa pouted, but didn't argue, retrieving her chain-adorned jacket and red bag.

Light rose from his chair and pulled a jacket on over his black long-sleeved button-down.

"I'll walk you to the station," he said flatly; noting that Ryuk sniggered again, and ignoring him.

"Yay!" Misa cried happily, linking her arm through Light's as they left the bedroom and descended the stairs; Ryuk floating close behind, attached to Misa in Rem's place. Sachiko Yagami was reading a magazine on the sofa, and looked up to acknowledge her son's departure, though didn't ask where he was headed.

Misa chattered blissfully about the fairytale Halloween party she'd attended a few nights ago, and about how she'd accidentally-on-purpose spilt a lurid green cocktail down Sleeping Beauty's dress; Light barely listening to her.

"Light, what date is it tomorrow?" She asked suddenly as he half-hauled her down the platform steps.

Light checked his watch.

"The fifth of November, Misa," he replied. "Why?"

"Yay!" Misa clapped her gloved hands together again. "The November edition of _J-Chic_ comes out tomorrow!"

"That's the one you're on the cover of, right?" Light asked jadedly.

Misa nodded vigorously, bunches swinging crazily.

"Yes. Matsu said he would get a copy for me."

"That's nice. Oh. Here's the train." Light grasped the model's elbow as the trained screeched a halt, bundling her in as soon as the doors opened; Ryuk faded through after her. "See you soon, Misa."

"Bye, Light! I love you! I—" The closing doors silenced the rest of Misa's vocal love letter, and Light gave a small sigh of relief as the train pulled away.

Misa Amane – sweet girl, and very pretty, but a walking headache if ever there was one.

Conveniently, the train station was located halfway between Light's house and the Kira Investigation Headquarters – where L was no doubt pacing up and down and checking the clock every few moments.

Light's phone rang when he was only two blocks away; and irritably he pulled it from his pocket, ready to snap at L or Misa, whichever of them it was.

Neither, incidentally.

"Hey, dad," Light said dully into the phone. "What's wrong?"

"Where are you?" His father demanded.

"I'm out with Misa. Mom just saw me leave the house with her." Light paused, and lowered his voice. "You can call and ask her if you don't believe me."

Soichiro Yagami cleared his throat over the other side of the line.

"No, I'll take your word for it, Light. Just don't stay out all night, okay? We still have a lot of work to do."

"I know, I know."

Light hung up and snapped his phone shut. Typical – he'd been L-free for six days, and now his own _father_ was suspiciously stalking his every move…

Couldn't a God-complexed mass-murderer get a moment's peace around here…?

He checked his watch and decided to run the last block.

He wasn't _afraid_ of L, that freaky little bastard – but L didn't like it when he was late, and Light had learned the hard way, a _long_ time ago, that L had a rather sadistic streak to his nature—

And it was, after all, L's turn to be on top.

* * *

L watched Light dress; illuminated some by the dull glow of the beginnings of November aurora. The detective himself was fully dressed already, perched at end of the bed, his expression listless.

"This is stupid," he said.

Light glanced sparingly at him.

"Ryuzaki, things have changed," he replied, buttoning up his shirt. "It's no longer normal for us to come downstairs together – not when I'm supposed to be at home, in my own bed."

"I take it you haven't been caught sneaking back into the house yet, then?"

"No. Nobody's awake at 5:30am."

L gave a small nod – they'd come up with this as a plan. Light came here at around 11pm, and left the following morning at 5am. L, ever the insomniac, always woke him up, although at times he was tempted not to, and leave him lying there, in L's bed, which was the way that L felt things should still be.

"Perhaps things could be easier for you," L went on. "I could come to your house—"

"No," Light interrupted. "That's way too risky. My window is too high to get in and out from, and even if my parents didn't catch you sneaking into the house, my room is right next to theirs. They'd hear us."

L gave a small smirk.

"Yes, you are right, Light-kun. I don't think they would like listening to me making you scream."

Light glowered at him before swiftly buttoning the remainder of his shirt.

"Listen, pervert," he seethed, "I'm sorry things aren't the way they used to be, but now that you've set me free, it looks odd to everyone if I still lurk around here at night when I could go home. If you want this to continue, you have to make a few sacrifices."

"Ah, Light-kun is lecturing me." L smiled. "How delightful."

Light gave a snort.

"Maybe you should watch your tongue, Ryuzaki."

"And why would you threaten me in such a way?" L asked, leaning forward.

"Because it's _my_ turn to be on top tonight!" Light snapped.

L smirked.

"Idle threats, Light-kun. You have yet to defeat me, you know." He nibbled at his thumbnail. "A pity, perhaps, but I am not afraid of you."

"Well, that's good to know," Light replied absently, checking his watch. "I should really get going."

L hopped off the bed and padded nimbly after him as he went to the bedroom door, zipping his jacket.

"You know, Light-kun," he said airily, "I am certain I could talk your father into allowing you to stay here again. There are things concerning the Kira case for us to still to investigate, after all, and you have proved your exceptional deductive skills."

Light shot him a pitying glance.

"Over your dead body, Ryuzaki."

L blinked at him.

"Why do you say mine, Light-kun?"

"Because my father would string you up if you even _hinted_ at such a thing."

L glanced at the ceiling.

"He disapproves of same-sex relationships that much, Light-kun?"

"Ryuzaki, he disapproves of _Misa_."

"I disapprove of Misa-san also, Light-kun."

"That's because you're a bastard." Light kissed L before he could react to the bone-cut snipe. "I'll see you in a few hours."

The brunette teen left, a smirk on his handsome face which L acknowledged but had no time or reason to respond to.

L wandered back into the bedroom, closing the door by leaning his back against it.

Light had brought apples last night. He had been fifteen minutes late, because he'd stopped to buy apples – sauntering in here, knowing full _well_ he was fifteen minutes late, crunching on a crimson-skinned apple.

He'd offered L one with his customary "Love apple?" tag question, and L had taken it, munching it moodily while declaring that he was not a Shinigami. Light had laughed, and acknowledged that _L_ seemed to think that Shinigamis ate birthday cake.

After the two cores had been placed side by side on the table, it was down to business.

"How-dare-you-make-me-wait-fifteen-whole-minutes!" type business.

L had pounded Light Yagami into the mattress whilst still harboring a slight suspicion for his being Kira – and all was right with the world.

L fished another apple from the paper bag left down by the bedside, plucking it out by the stalk, and sank his teeth into it, thinking it ironic that apples had become something of a token of their relationship, not least because of Shinigamis and Snow White; but because they were said to represent sexuality and sin, and those intermingled was surely what was between he and Light…

Out of macabre interest, L wondered whether Soichiro Yagami really _would_ string him up if he were to suggest that Light take up residence here again, alone with L at night…

Not that that didn't happen anyway. Ignorance was bliss, the detective supposed.

He thought that he might provoke Chief Yagami a little, since he was apparently so loathe to sharing his son with needy cake-murderers; he'd slip Light a note with some suggestive – though not entirely incriminating – comment scrawled on it, deliberately ensuring that the boy's father saw him do it, and would then make a getaway when Yagami-san demanded to see the note in question by setting off his own phone in his pocket and pretending to get a call from Watari.

Light would be mortified, but that haughty brat needed taking down a peg or two anyway, was L's opinion.

He wasn't sure what he was going to write, but when he was finished with his apple he hunted around for the notebook Light had given him, finding it on the desk; he took up a pen and went back to the bed with both items, flipping to the first page and seeing their spliced Japanese-English written conversation, which was something he couldn't help but smile at.

Still at a loss for what to write, L absently began to flip through the notebook's empty pages – blank white lined sheet after sheet after sheet…

Until something made him stop. Something wedged it between two of the pages. Something small and white and rectangular and smooth.

L plucked the ace of spades from being jammed almost into the spine of the notebook, holding it daintily between his finger and thumb as he lifted it up to eye level to stare at it in horror.

_What could it mean?_

Oh, but that was a silly question. He knew what it meant. He knew what every factor and implication that went with this simple playing card meant. The implications were already sprinting ahead as he couldn't stop his genius capacity from processing the symbol, though he desperately wished he could hinder the thoughts, or at least the cold wet towels which had been suddenly wound tightly around his chest.

Light Yagami had lied to him, was the pure fact of the matter. He'd put the card into the notebook before wrapping it, seemingly of the mindset that it didn't matter how soon L found it or if he even found it at all. It wasn't any message, in particular – it was just a symbol.

A symbol to show that Light had lied and L had, like a fool, believed him.

Why the card? Why an ace? It could mean any of a number of things. A victory toast – the fact that Light had trumped him, or so he thought. Or perhaps it was merely reminiscent of those games of _Twenty-Ones_, where L had been the one to lie, and Light had been the fool.

And ultimately, the presence of the card itself was proof enough that Light had at least lied about one thing – his little sister Sayu had neither bought the notebook nor wrapped it.

Light had given him a notebook on purpose, probably bought it as soon as he was free to leave as he pleased, slipping the card in to tell L that the game would soon be over.

And maybe it was tenuous then to conclude that Light Yagami was Kira, solely from this clue – but no doubt that was Light's plan. It _was_ tenuous. _Far too tenuous_. He couldn't present this as substantial evidence to _anyone_ as proof that Light was Kira. It was in a context that only L could understand – and it was a deeply personal context, which was why it hurt even more. He knew how to twist the knife, that boy, certainly…

But… the killings had resumed again, and they tended to happen at night, and Light never got a chance to anything Kira-like at all at night, since he was either getting it _from_ L or giving it _to_ L.

The Second Kira, then…?

_Misa Amane_.

L felt like slamming his head against the wall. That little _bitch_…! Was she _stupid_? After being _caught_ after forensic evidence pointed to her being the Second Kira, and then all that surveillance…

While L was certain now that Light was indeed Kira, it was _Misa_ that his rage settled on; for he was equally certain that Light was not actually killing anyone at present.

It _had_ to be Misa.

Did this mean that the 13 day rule was indeed fake, then? That was his only hope of nailing Light and Misa, for that rule to be proved untrue.

A playing card inside a notebook just wasn't enough.

A dreadful suffocating feeling came over him, threatening to drown him in despair. So after all this… after _everything_ they'd… Light really _was_ Kira. Had he truly been lying all those months, or was it as L suspected? Was there a way to pass Kira's power onto another, presumably via the Death Note, while the original one with those powers lost their memories of them…?

Oh, it didn't even _matter_. He'd been fucking Kira for three months, was the black-and-white of it. Not someone who was _maybe_ Kira – someone who was _actually_ Kira.

No. No, that wasn't… it wasn't like that, it wasn't because he was Kira, or even _maybe_-Kira, it was because he was _Light_, and L was attracted to Light, and L loved Light, and Light had said that he loved L, or Ryuzaki, anyway, and he'd said it when he _wasn't_ Kira (perhaps?) but he'd also said it when he _was_, and did that mean that L could believe him the first time and not the second, or both times, or neither?

He recalled once that he'd told Light it wasn't an impossibility for L to love Kira and vice versa, no matter their own personal values.

He'd also said that it was easier to destroy someone you loved than someone you didn't – they were easier to break _because_ they loved you.

And that was what had happened.

Though… Light was such a good actor, such a seamless liar, it was hard to tell if he had ever meant any of the things he had ever said.

Regardless, L didn't know what to do, suddenly reeling beneath the huge condemning revelation. He had no idea where to turn next – he had his own proof that Light and Misa were both Kiras, but nothing that could ever have a hope in Hell of convicting them. Besides… the fact that it was now completely apparent that Light was Kira didn't mean that he wasn't Light anymore.

And L loved Light. L loved Light more than anything.

He _hated_ him too, for his lies, and for his values, and for his sins – but that was Kira, in truth.

L hated Kira and loved Light for ever after.

L slid his phone from his pocket; he should call Light, force him to come back, so he could confront him, pry every ounce of truth from him, even if it made the boy sweat _blood_…

He didn't, though. He _couldn't_. Love had all but poisoned L, and he couldn't bear to hear the truth from the boy's own lips. All this time he had wanted a confession, and now, when he was in a position to get one, he didn't want to hear it.

Instead he threw the phone aside and took up the pen and wrote in the notebook:

_Light Yagami is Kira_

He was certain. One hundred percent. He'd hoped that he was wrong, but it wasn't to be so. L was rather too brilliant for his own good, sometimes.

He was right even when he desperately _wanted_ to be wrong.

Yes; ignorance was indeed bliss.

* * *

_He'd dreamt of the orphanage – of Wammy's House. _

_Seeing himself as a child again, no older than six, wrapped in a scarf too big for him; clutching Watari's hand before the gothic wrought-iron gates of the Winchester-set building. It had been a cold day in December, with snowfall._

_A stupid, irrelevant memory, really._

_And then there were the Three. His Three._

_Mihael, Nate, Mail. Mello, Near, Matt._

_And after he woke up again, he felt some terrible kind of sick longing, the source of which he couldn't place, though it gnawed worse when he thought of them._

_The Three of them._

_Maybe it was guilt – after all, they loved him. They all wanted to be like him._

_And he had allowed himself to be poisoned and destroyed._

_He could say nothing as he stood in front of Watari; as the elderly gentleman who had raised him turned in his chair from his ops equipment, and looked at L slouching in the doorway, looking like that child again._

_He looked terrible, to be truthful – as though all of his strength had been drained from him. Watari could barely find brilliant, confident L in there, no Coil or Deneuve – not even the wild-haired sixteen-year-old L, declaring with utmost certainty that his birthday was not to be celebrated._

"_What's wrong, Ryuzaki?" Watari asked, though received nothing but the haunted stare of those mirror-mirror eyes. "Ryuzaki? What's the matter?" _

'_You were right', L wanted to say; as he had wanted to say before._

_But, as before, his voice wouldn't work; sticking in his throat like Snow White's bite of poisoned apple._

'_You were right'. But it didn't come. Eyes still wide, almost unseeing, L sank to his knees at the doorway of the room._

"_Ryuzaki?" Watari rose from his seat, going to the detective and kneeling on one knee beside him._

_And L wanted to say so many things to him – to tell him that he'd been right, and that he, L, had been an idiot not to listen, and that Light was Kira, and L loved him, and what was he going to do…?_

_But he could only manage "I'm sorry" before he grasped at Watari's jacket as though he was in agony and started to cry._

* * *

They'd made preparations – and Watari had come through.

In the end, L had drank from the poisoned cup, or eaten from the poisoned apple, or whatever. His name was the only thread keeping him alive, and if he wanted to stay that way and solve this case, he had to act fast.

He had to choose Justice over Love, as he had always decreed (even if it felt as though some clawed icy hand was grasping his heart and squeezing it tighter and tighter, as though bidding it to burst beneath the iron grip).

Watari had managed to find a country agreeable to testing the Death Note on death row prisoners to ascertain whether or not the rules were fake, true, or a combination of both.

L bid Watari a dull goodbye and snapped his phone shut; looking up at Light. They were both still dripping wet from standing outside in the pouring rain, despite L's efforts to dry Light off. Light shifted his bare feet a little – he'd been agreeable enough, but he didn't like having his feet touched.

Standing out on the roof again – where they had stood a month ago in the gold of the dawn, hand-in-hand and heart-in-heart. Though the atmosphere had been painfully different, save for the bells…

Light's chocolate eyes were conflicted and unreadable. L could hardly bear to look the boy in the face, truthfully, but when he did, he couldn't say what he was feeling. Was Light beginning to regret… well, _everything_? The card in the notebook? His lies? His actions?

_Kira_?

"We should go."

L rose and started to walk away; Light got up and started after him, the silence between them heavy and raw.

"Ryuzaki—" he started finally.

"L."

Light blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

"Call me L." L glanced at him. "You heard what I said, Light-kun."

"L, then—"

"In fact, Light-kun, I will ask _you_ something," L interrupted again, his voice soft and weary. "Do you mind?"

Light shook his head, not having much choice in the matter, apparently.

L stopped. Light almost walked into him, stopping just short; and L turned to him, mirror eyes inescapable. Light found himself looking at his reflection in them, and yes, _he_ could see Kira there now too…

L's eyes had never distorted him – L's eyes had seen the truth. Always, always seen the truth. It was almost as though he had Shinigami Eyes of his own – for what did those gift-eyes see but truth? Someone's real name, and the exact amount of time they had left to live.

_(Mirror, mirror, on the wall; which of us is he who'll fall…?)_

"I asked you if you had ever said a true thing in your entire life," L said softly. "You replied that of course you had lied, being as it is that nobody is perfect, but have never told lies which would be harmful to those you love."

"Yes," Light replied uneasily.

L leaned forward.

"_That_ was a lie as well, wasn't it?"

Light blinked at him.

"What…? Ryuzaki, I don't—"

"_L_." L gave a sad little shake of his head. "You don't know my name, Light Yagami."

"I don't _want_ your name, I'm not—"

"Don't insult me," L spat. "That is irrelevant, anyway. I was merely analyzing your statement about lies. From the fact that you said that you would never lie if it hurt those you loved, I can come to only two conclusions."

"Like _what_?" Light breathed.

"The first is that the statement itself was a lie." L's gaze was spellbinding; maybe the Maleficent in him, maybe not. "The second is that the statement is true; but if that is the case, it remains that you never loved me."

"Ryuzaki, that's… that's not true, of course I—"

"My _name_ is _L_." Perhaps a double-meaning, perhaps not; Light was too rattled now to read into it. "I want to ask you a question, Light-kun, and I want an honest answer. No, I _need_ an honest answer."

"If it's about Kira—"

"It isn't." L tilted his head. "I don't need to ask you about that. Light-kun… do you love me?"

"Yes, _L_." Light let out a little breath. "I love you."

There – there it was. That was the difference. There _was_ a difference. Light _had_ loved him once – L knew now, that time on the roof, watching the sunrise… Light had meant it then.

One upon a dream.

But now…

L smiled bitterly.

"I don't believe you."

Light's fists clenched; and L wasn't sure if he was going to yell, or spit back a retort, or _punch_ him.

But he didn't; though his brown eyes darkened as he glared at L.

"_What do you want_?" He hissed.

"Nothing," L said sadly; because light was nothing, after all…

"Then stop playing around!" Light snapped, storming past him. "Come on, we have work to do!"

"Light, this is out of your control now," L said gently; and it was the dropping of the honorary that made Light stop and turn back to him more so than the words, though they did play a part.

"What do you mean?" Light blazed. "Ryuzaki, L, Ryuga, _whoever_ the hell you are…! For the last time, I am _not_—"

"Kira?" L finished; drawing from his sleeve the ace and holding up in front of Light.

Light stopped short, apparently floored by his own little taunt.

L reached out, hooking Light's belt with a finger and slipping the ace down behind his buckle.

"I realized something," he said, looking up at Light; mirror eyes glinting like dark jewels. "You were right."

"About… what?" Light asked warily.

"All of this. It's not some fairytale."

And as Light blinked in puzzlement, L leaned forward and kissed him; with all of Maleficent, and all of the poison, everything that they'd had and lost to the Death Note, and though they were wet and cold and out in an open corridor, they pressed up close to one another, embracing tightly, fingers tangling in soaked clothes and drenched hair.

It was the bite to the apple; the moment the spindle brought blood; the last petal breaking loose and shimmering downwards.

All of their Heaven and all of their Hell was dragged into that poison-drenched kiss; and perhaps those were tears, or perhaps it was just that their hair was still wet…

And then L broke from him, mirrors glinting, reflecting Kira breathless and bewildered; and he put his hands in his pockets, as though in a gesture of closure, and began to walk away.

"For you and I, Light-kun," he said softly, "there was never going to be a happily ever after."

* * *

**/END OFACT I:**_** FAIRIETAYLE/**_

First, to clarify: I think we've been confusing people. This is **NOT** the end of _Poison Apple_ – it's only the end of the _**act**_. The fic is composed of three acts, which will all be posted here under the collective title of _Poison Apple_.

Incidentally, Act Two is entitled _Ars Moriendi_ and is actually kind of a rip since it's only one chapter. _Ars Moriendi_ will be posted in… well, I haven't finished writing it yet, so perhaps a fortnight is a more realistic promise…

Second… Look at that! You all brought tissues for nothing! L didn't actually die…!

…_Yet_. To all who have begged that we avert from the anime/manga storyline… Sorry. _No_. I know you want a happy ending for them, but… _Death Note_ doesn't **do** happy endings. Practically _everyone_ in the things dies… You're basically left with Near, Matsuda, Misa and Aizawa having a rather lonely little "We Survived!" party with flat Coca-Cola and crap music…

This isn't Disney, kids. :)

Besides, you may have noticed that actual REAL story of _Poison Apple_ is **not** _Fairietayle_, which is actually just a foundation – the _REAL_ story is Act Three: _Danse Macabre_, where L is resurrected and stuff…

Third: The fact that the chapter posted on _my_ birthday is the chapter which deals with _L's_ birthday… is a coincidence. Honestly and truly, it is. I wasn't thinking this far ahead when we started posting on October 1st…

Okay, fair warning: Bring the tissues next time, if you feel you will need them, because L dies.

Not that you didn't see _that_ coming… Take it up with Ohba and Obata if it upsets you so much. It's got nothing to with us…

None of these ANs are Narroch's because she's lost her mind or something… Don't see how she lost it – she never had one to begin with…

- RobinRocks xXx (and Narroch, on her behalf)

P.S: Incidentally, I appear to have more friends than L, since I have managed to accumulate no less than four birthday cakes over a three-day period… O.o


	11. Act II: Ars Moriendi

**RobinRocks: **Welcome one and all to _Poison Apple_: Act II – _Ars Moriendi_. :D

**Narroch: **All I can say is ABOUT time! Gawd… Let me tell you all, last chapter was quite painful for me. Don't ever try to write this sort of stuff (especially 28 daggum single space pages of it) during finals. And don't get evicted during finals like I was either… that was no fun… (I'm happy I don't have an ulcer by this point XD) THIS chapter was much better to write, since I am on break now and it isn't quite as crazy long as the last one.

**RobinRocks: **This is being updated today (14th December) specially to celebrate the UK release of Disney's new movie, _Enchanted_. It seemed ironic that Disney would suddenly spit out a new fairytale movie just as we start debaucherising their classics with _Death Note_ yaoi, so we though we'd jump on their bandwagon in return (heh heh, they're watching us…). Soooooooo… hurrah for _Enchanted_, which looks fabulous!

**Narroch: **A movie which, ironically, has been out in the U.S. for a while now and I still haven't seen. Heh…

**RobinRocks: **And _shame_ to all you Americans who haven't seen it, you've had it since like November… I can't _wait_ to see it!

Anyway, moving on. As mentioned before, Act II is only this one chapter – it's like a bridge between Act I and Act III. As another ironic factor, it may interest you to know that I did in fact do a group presentation on the _Ars Moriendi_ just today (that's THE _Ars Moriendi_, not this chapter…) for my Literature and the City English module. The delightfully morbid topic we chose was the Plague… Soooooooo I wrote about the _Ars Moriendi_.

What is the _Ars Moriendi_? Aha, it's Education Time (but not Peanut Butter Jelly Time…)! The _Ars Moriendi_ is in fact two Latin texts dated at around 1415 and 1450 – the title translates as "the art of (good) dying" and they were guidebooks on how to die an acceptable Christian death. They were translated to most European languages in the Medieval period following the outbreak of the Black Death, and were very popular, probably due to their consoling nature in the face of impending death by the plague. They emphasized a clear need to prepare for death – a notion referred to as 'memento mori'.

Well, that's what the REAL _Ars Moriendi_ is, anyway… What a cheerful lot they were back then…

Thankyou to (a massive FIFTY reviewers!): **Jyrenze, Poison's Ivy, Inu Yokai 911, Mask of Mirage, SMALLwhitelies, Li the Twilight Knight, MeEksiNs, Serria, Travian sez, Autumn Dynasty, BakayaroManiac, Oztan, Bloodshot Eyes, Akasuna Scorpion, Non al Denaro Non all'Amore, Year-of-the-dragon, Nilahxapiel, Silent Dagger, GreyLiliy, Kurokawa-Miharu, DoYouFindMeDreadful, milk0bar, ElegantArrow64, Saecula, Kawaiitoky, L'Animalerie, Isis Chandra Wu, Accidental Affinity, RedEyed Wolf-2, Nokturnal Augury, Addictedreader09, ViolentArtista, Vedevria, Death-to-the-tadpoleclowns, Believe It, The Ultimate Fic Critic, Jenna, previously-recorded, Lady Psychic, Mayura-Hikari-090, Sarah T, Sukutai, Kiyoiyuki, Dawn-at-Midnight, Phoenix of Hell, Elomelo, NuttPea, Anna, DarkDragon34 **and **RandomTopic**! Whew! Thankyou SOOOOOOOO much guys! _Ever After_ received the best response yet!

**Narroch: **Enjoy the chapter!

Poison Apple

Act Two: _Ars Moriendi_

('The Art of Dying' - Latin)

"_And to confirm your truth to me," the Wicked Queen whispered, "I shall desire proof of the deed. Here."_

_She held out the ornate wooden box, opening the lid to reveal the empty black velveteen interior._

"_Take this, noble woodcutter. You shall cut out Snow White's heart and return it to me in this box – and knowing that her heart indeed beats no more, I shall be satisfied by your loyalty."_

"_Your Majesty, the princess…" the woodcutter choked, aghast… "Her heart…?"_

"_Yes, gracious woodcutter." _

_The blade of his axe glinted in her wicked eyes – glassy as her mirror._

"_Her __**heart**."_

* * *

'_Holding onto you_

_To keep from falling;_

_Your eyes are closing now,_

_Another chapter's ending—_

_This is our last goodbye…'_

_Poison_; **Bullet for My Valentine**

* * *

Light found that even though there were a myriad of options, ranging from the humorously ironic, to the disturbingly sadistic, he had ended up keeping his promise – made in the gold of aurora almost a month ago, intertwined with the man he had loved, the detective whose subtle beauty was such that it was despicable in a lot of ways, when he'd still been ignorant of who _he_ truly was. The half-romantic, half-morose request had never left his mind, slinking behind the influx of killer memories, refusing to be ignored in favor of a more impressive bloodletting.

L had asked to die in his arms.

Though he had been goading Rem in his mind, telling her in silence that if she wanted Misa to live, she had to kill Ryuzaki, kill L, it was the only way, and she had to do it _now_—!

Though those had been his thoughts, even as the power shuddered out and L cried "Watari!" in some sort of half-desperate mewl as all the data began to delete in a gray landslide of non-existence…

When L _himself_ suddenly seized up in his chair, cutting himself off in the middle of a sentence, his eyes widening and the teaspoon between his fingers quivering before slipping and clattering to the floor—

Reality suddenly snapped back as it often does in times of chaos, having the power to slow down time or speed it up depending entirely on the accepting nature of the psyche – Light didn't know what to think, the half-born deliberations being abruptly aborted by the fruition of his grand scheme. Though this – Rem's action – was his desire, the sudden unreal reality and actuality of it happening right before him jarred him out of his regular mechanism of thinking, being washed over by an alien _blankness, _a complete detachment from the thought process that normally accompanied him as naturally and incessantly as breathing. As he watched L suddenly keel sideways out of his chair, the slow downwards motion tattooed onto the air around him, he couldn't understand the sudden sharp void that opened within him.

And while his mind was still flailing in the gray membrane of vacuity, his body jumpstarted all on its own and he couldn't stop himself then. It wasn't an act – a previously-planned action; "I must grab L before he falls so that it doesn't look as though I had anything to do with it"… It was that his mind had gone blank; it had absolutely nothing to offer, and he found that his senses were all he had to rely on. And at that very strung-out second, his sense of sight told him that L was going to hit the floor, so he leapt forward to his knees, cushioning the detective's fall as he landed hard on his back on the linoleum.

Matsuda cried something – "Ryuzaki, what's wrong?" something like that, and Light barely heard him. The sounds were garbled and disjointed, seeping into his ears through a muffled jumble of yellowed wool and battery acid, as he felt L suddenly grab at his shoulder, clutching the material of his shirt with all of his strength.

And the eyes…

L's ebony eyes were wide open, twin globes of night gazing up at Light, and beyond the glass that served up Kira's reflection as clear as day, they were so full of… well, _everything_… that they were cluttered, almost unreadable. There was agony and fear and horror and realization and confusion and devastation and hatred and love…

Light could only stare down at him, overwhelmed by the suddenly vast volume his eyes could encompass, spellbound by his dark gaze which acted as a manacle – and though his mind still shuddered, struggling to reboot after crashing so violently, he knew on a detached level that L was dying.

If he had ever wanted to change his mind, it was now far too late. L was dying – the bite had been taken, the spindle touched, and this was the result: _L was dying in his arms._

He wanted to speak, but found that he couldn't. It was impossible to force a sound from his clenched throat; the dampers were pressed firmly down, muffling any attempts. He could tell that _L_ wanted to speak as well, but had lost the means to – as his body betrayed his preciously guarded self-control, spasming it away from him moments from his last breath.

Though Light did not know what he would say to him even if he could speak in that prolonged second. Whether he would apologize, or confess, or scorn him. And though he still could not speak, something in the way that L's steel grip on him suddenly loosened made him react; made the taut internal tug-of-war tip in favor of the shadowy and self-serving.

The now inevitable death enticed a smile, a specific smirk never used out of pleasure, but instead reserved for malice, superiority, and sometimes even anger. It was an expression pre-Kira Light couldn't have hoped to mimic, much like the Wicked Queen's transformation to a dreadful hag. But now that dark grin grew, warped and hideous, twisting to a smirk that spoke of victory, and perhaps the mirrors in L's eyes _cracked_ and shattered at such a sight – at his appalling, silent confession – because once all the broken shards of reflective emotions were swept away, Light could only read one remaining emotion in those captivating eyes—

Betrayal.

Light was still smirking when L's eyes finally lost their hypnotic gleam, slid closed; and he breathed one last time, a shallow, agonized gasp…

And died in Light's arms.

* * *

He'd spoken of bells – and as he lay in Light Yagami's arms, it was all he could hear, the wailing and weeping of bells…

And though it was not his nature to beg, L Lawliet begged then in silence, speared through the heart with a sword of raw pain; and though it cast unspeakable agony on the lower sphere of physical flesh, he still focused every dimming resource he possessed on his dying plea.

_Please, Light. Please let me be wrong, despite everything I have against you. If you can do nothing else for me, at least, I beg you, prove me wrong_

The smoldering smirk which shot his wish down in flames hurt him far worse than his failing heart did. The clear confession cleaved through him, down to his very core, and his hand dropped away from Light's shoulder, due in equal part to depleted strength and devastation.

He'd known Light was Kira. He'd always thought so, and this morning he'd been awarded almost-solid proof.

But at this moment – one of his very last – his heart broke (in more ways than one).

It hurt his heart far worse than the clot killing him to look up at Light Yagami and see his friend and his lover and his _murderer_ all fused as one – and it was unclear, even to L Lawliet himself, whether his last thought was _'I was right'_ or _'But I love you'_.

His eyes blurred the sight of Light's smirk, darkening around the edges as his eyes closed – and, then, mercifully, he knew no more pain.

* * *

—_And then, at her most deadly, Maleficent drew back, fire licking between her fangs, seeking complete destruction – ready to deal the death blow, to crush and defeat and end this once and for all—_

_And therein came the sword, thrusting deep into her heart, spilling torturous agony forth from that precious spot, snuffing her fire and draining her power; and brought down from her smiting pedestal, she collapsed and crashed forwards, the sword plunging deeper and deeper still, killing her even in her most powerful form._

_She plummeted over the edge, down into the abyss, the pain merciless – whereby she was met with death and defeat, and all that remained was the thing that had killed her._

* * *

'_I would not wish to see you laid_

_Within an early tomb;_

_I should forget how you betray'd_

_And only weep your doom:_

_But this is fitting punishment_

_To live and love in vain—_

_Oh My Wrung Heart, be thou content_

_And feed upon his pain.'_

_Revenge_; **Letitia Elizabeth Landon** (1829)

* * *

Feeling L fall still in his arms, nerveless and unresponding, sobered Light up – the smirk slid off his face and the internal rope that had been pulling in Kira's favor suddenly _heaved_ and tumbled back to the other extreme as it became a fact as cold and hard and pitiless as L's percentages:

L was dead.

It wasn't a game, or a sleeping pill dissolved onto an apple's skin – it wasn't a fairytale, whereby a kiss would make him open his eyes and smile.

L was dead – and that was final.

_Light screamed_.

He screamed, and though the words that followed it were lies, bred purely to abort any suspicion surrounding himself ("We're all going to die! Watari, Ryuzaki… we'll all be _killed_…!"), the initial scream, which coated the room in hundreds of emotions drawn out on the single wrenching sound, was not.

Light was Kira – he'd studied the damn Death Note, manipulated its rules and abilities upside-down and back-to-front, and he knew more about it than Rem and Ryuk put together seemed to, and he _knew_ beyond a doubt that L was dead.

But he still shook the unresponsive body with stubborn desperation – and it wasn't an act. He barely noticed the rest of the team now, the sudden steel-hard apparency that _L was dead_ hitting him like a sledgehammer blow to the gut – or the crotch. It stole his breath, crippled him, rendered him senseless, and sent his heart bungee jumping down to his feet. Perhaps _because_ L had died in his arms, and it was a feeling that was intangible in human terms, to have someone… _die_ in your _arms_… Holding someone who is alive and cognizant and focusing on your face one second, and dead and still and gazing unseeingly at something over your left shoulder the very next; the flare of life snuffing out right beneath your nose. It is an overwhelming experience, almost a responsibility.

And for it to have been someone you _loved_ – yet you had chosen to execute – die in your arms, fully aware of that fact that you had betrayed them; and their final gaze up at you one of utter despair…

Light had needed him dead. There was no question of it – and somewhere in him, there _must_ be relief, because without L, there was no challenge to his and Misa's innocence, no challenge to his complete reign…

But he could not know it right now as he knelt there, _L dead in his arms_.

And maybe it was because Light had never once seen any of his victims actually die, but he couldn't accept that L wasn't going to open his eyes again; and so he shook him, murmuring to him…

"Ryuzaki…! Come on, get up, _get up_… Wake _up_, open your eyes, _goddamn_ you, Ryuzaki…"

Though L – Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty, fallen to their fates – only lay still, clutched in Light's arms like a porcelain doll.

"Light…" Chief Yagami said gently, reaching down towards his son's shoulder.

"No!" Light cried suddenly, holding L to him tighter still, and bending over him as though taken with sudden excruciating pain of his own; his father withdrew his hand.

"L-let's get an ambulance," Mogi said shakily.

Aizawa looked about anxiously.

"What about a family member?" He asked. "Watari is…"

"It's alright, I'll accompany him," Chief Yagami said wearily; he looked again at his stricken son.

Light was clutching L's white wrist, feeling desperately for even the slightest breath of a pulse – but there was nothing there, nothing at all…

Not that he was surprised. He'd counted on L dying.

He hadn't counted on how much it would _hurt_.

The back-up power system kicked in with a sudden buzzing sound, and Aizawa jogged out of the room to call the emergency services and request an ambulance; somewhere along the line Matsuda had collapsed to his knees, while Mogi was leaning up against the desk.

Soichiro Yagami bent down once again towards his son.

"Light," he said, his voice soft but firm, as though talking to a small child, "let him go. The ambulance will be here soon. You may be damaging his chances of survival."

"There's no way to save him," Light replied hollowly, subtly revealing just how much he knew about the situation. He stared at the floor, adjusting his grip on the dead detective so that he was cradling rather than clutching him.

"You don't know that, Light," Matsuda said protested weakly, still struggling with the shock himself. "They can maybe give him that… you know, that zappy thing to the chest and start his heart again…"

Light gripped L tighter still to him; his eyes burning. He wanted to punch Matsuda for his ignorance, but there was also a fierceness in the fact that he suddenly didn't want anyone else to touch L, didn't want medics pawing over him, cutting him out of his clothes so that they could pump 50,000 volts through his thin chest with a defibrillator…

All in vain.

For one thought – one fact; one _rule_ – stuck in Light's mind (or perhaps his throat, like that ever-present poison apple bite…):

_Once they are dead, they can never come back to life._

He was certain that wasn't just in "supernatural" terms – it probably applied to medical means of resurrection as well. If it was written in a Death Note that Person X was to die, then surely no matter _how_ many volts were sent coursing through their body… If their heart _was_ to start again, the Death Note would overrule, and their heart would cut out again.

He didn't think he could _face_ the sight of L spasming and coughing and perhaps even _opening his eyes_… Only for death to snatch him away again only moments later.

That wasn't how the fairytale was supposed to work, after all…

Though what did he have before him but _rewritten_ fairytales? Hadn't death been the original _intents_ of both the Wicked Queen and Maleficent? Snow White, Aurora – neither were supposed to have fallen merely to sleep – they were supposed to have _died_, punished in pure _ultimum_ for their sins…

"Ambulance will be here soon," Aizawa said wearily on reentering the room, slipping his phone back into the breast pocket of his jacket. "Said they'd be five minutes at the most…"

Chief Yagami gave a small, tired nod, his worry-creased face not relaxing in the slightest.

"Thankyou, Aizawa. Could you please go and find Watari and see what the situation with him is? It's possible that he isn't dead."

"Sure, chief."

"Mogi, go with him."

Mogi gave a silent nod and accompanied Aizawa out of the room.

"Light…" Matsuda who had finally found his legs again, came over to him. "It… maybe it isn't too late…"

Light gave a small shiver, and only looked at the floor, his eyes dry and burning. His father stood a little way off, apparently helpless, at a complete loss for what to do. It was terrible enough that L – the lead detective – had just collapsed and was most likely dead, but his _son_…

It was understandable that he was shocked, and probably upset, but to be _clutching_ at him like that, refusing to let him go so that they could move him…

Chief Yagami looked at his watch.

"I suppose I'd better go override the security codes so that the paramedics can get in," he said softly. He left the room without another word.

"Chief, wait…!" Matsuda scrambled after him; leaving Light alone in the room with L clutched to his chest.

Though, in their absence, Light uttered not a word. His mind still hadn't completed its reinstallation – jammed on the _Error_ screen, trapped in a spiraling cycle of denial. And although it was in fact L who lay dead in his arms, he still felt that he could hear him, commenting on this very situation:

"_This is a ridiculous diversion. We're wasting valuable time; though, it must be said, Light-kun, this heightens my suspicion of you to one hundred percent likely that you are Kira…"_

Light pressed his lips tightly together and shook the disturbingly vivid voice away. He could tell him to shut up, to _shut_ the fuck _up_, Ryuzaki, but wasn't that what he'd _done_ already?

Shut him the fuck up once and for all?

Aizawa came back, peering into the room.

"Where's the chief?" He asked.

"Downstairs," Light muttered, not looking at him.

"Light…?" Aizawa frowned. "I… really think you should put him down."

Light inhaled deeply, holding the detective tighter still, and Aizawa left again, pulling his cellphone from his pocket to call Chief Yagami and tell him the bad news about Watari.

Light _couldn't_ let him go. The moment he let him go, it would be over – it would be Separation. When Light had taken him into his arms, the detective had still been alive, and though he clearly breathed no more, the fact that Light had still yet to cease clutching him seemed to suspend the moment, and actuality of L's death was not _fact_ when he still lay warm in the grip of his friend and enemy and lover, as he had done many a night after the sex was over.

To put him down would be to _accept_ it.

As Light miserably knelt there, he thought dully that maybe he'd grown apathetic about death, being as it was that he had the power to effortlessly deal it without much more exertion than putting pen to paper. And true – he'd never once been in the presence of one of his victims as they took their last breath, never had them _die in his arms_…

The utter finality and irreversibility of it hadn't ever seemed truly apparent to him – until now. And yes, this was how things had to be: L had to die for Misa – and Light himself – to live, but…

It wasn't as easy as he had thought it would be. So overridden with his sudden memory regain and exceedingly gleeful about how smoothly his plans had gone, Light had failed to realize (until now, when it was far too late) that…

…On some level, he still _loved_ L.

Kira, perhaps; but Light Yagami was still human. Even through his need to have L removed from his way, his feelings for him were not something that could be swept aside, even though it had seemed that way at first. That was why this hurt even more – because Light knew that even if he _had_ realized that he still loved the detective before he'd been bumped off by Rem only minutes ago—

He'd still have let her kill him.

Voices drifted nearer from the corridor; and then his father was back, with Matsuda, Aizawa and four paramedics. Two of the latter accompanied Aizawa back to where Mogi was with Watari, while the remaining two – a male and female – left Chief Yagami's side and pushed a dithering, helpless Matsuda out of the way and came straight to where Light was still kneeling by the desk, holding L like a sleeping child.

"He… he won't let go," Chief Yagami murmured, following a little.

The female paramedic gave a small nod and crouched down opposite Light, while the male shot Chief Yagami a glance and informed him that this was actually quite common.

"Hey, sweetie," the female paramedic said softly, placing a gentle hand on Light's shoulder. "You're going to have to let your friend go, okay? We need to check him over."

"He's dead," Light said dully, not looking up.

"We might be able to save him," the paramedic coaxed. "Come on, we're wasting time."

Light shook his head; at which his father reached down and roughly tugged at his shoulder, losing his patience.

"Light, for god's sake…!" He snapped. "These people were called here because Ryuzaki collapsed, so cooperation is essential if there is to be any chance of his survival."

"Ryuzaki's _dead_…" Light breathed brokenly.

At this point the male paramedic pitched in and he and Chief Yagami hauled Light away while the female paramedic took L from his arms; and father restrained son under his arms as the traitorous, conniving, _evil_ paramedics placed L on a stretcher and took him out of the room and away…

"I want to go," Light said, his tone almost desperate. "I want to go in the ambulance with him—"

"No," his father interrupted firmly. "You will stay here with the rest of the team until I return." The fact that he hadn't mentioned Ryuzaki as returning with him was painfully noticeable, but Soichiro Yagami only shook his head wearily as he let Light go and started out of the room. "Just stay here with Matsuda."

"But I—"

"I said _stay here_!" Soichiro Yagami snapped, the mounting friction of the last few damaging events finally causing him to lose his temper with his son.

He rarely got angry to the point of yelling, and, stunned, Light backed down without another word, his chocolate eyes wide.

Chief Yagami slammed the door after him, leaving the sound to echo around the office; Light stood shakily in the middle of the floor, suddenly looking hopelessly alone, still wide-eyed and speechless.

Eventually his gaze slid to the floor – where he found, glinting in the glow of the dull back-up power, L's teaspoon, right where it had landed after falling from his fingers. He bent, snatching it up and gazing at it for a moment before pocketing it, then just standing there again, an island of silent despair in the engulfing emptiness of the room. His system was still tripping over itself; his brain refused to function when hanging from the end of its organic chain, neurons skipping out on a connection or two and sparking violently every time they missed.

"Light…" Matsuda took his elbow and steered the numb boy over to the sofas across the other side of the room. "Come and sit down before you collapse…"

The teen sank onto the cushions, sitting right at the edge and gazing at the floor intently, as though etched upon it was the alchemic formula for some Resurrection Elixir he could pour down L's throat—

"Do you want some coffee?" Matsuda asked, still noticeably very much ill at ease and yet unable to do anything more than the mundane to try and help the situation. "I'll… I'll make some coffee."

Light didn't even look at him; listening to him clatter about off to the side with the kettle and cups.

Aizawa and Mogi returned in grim silence.

"I'm making coffee," Matsuda announced loudly as they entered; though there was a noticeable quaver in his voice, even through the fake cheer. "Do you guys want some?"

Aizawa heaved a sigh and answered in the affirmative for both of them as they crossed to the sofas and sat on the one opposite Light.

"What about Watari?" Matsuda went on, bringing the steaming tray over.

"Dead," Aizawa said heavily. "I mean, they took him in the ambulance anyway, but Mogi and I checked for a pulse and breathing. Nothing."

Mogi gave a silent nod as Matsuda put the tray down on the coffee table.

"But, I mean…" He picked up a cup to give to Light. "They might still be able to save them. _Ryuzaki_, anyway, he… he collapsed _after_ Watari, they might still have time to give him that zap thingy… you know…"

"A defibrillator," Aizawa corrected dully, without sparing a glance, sipping slowly at his coffee.

"Right." Matsuda noticed that he was still holding the coffee cup, and that Light wasn't even looking at him. "Light, your coffee…?"

"I don't want it…" Light mumbled miserably.

"Light, you should drink it," Aizawa told him over his own. "It'll make you feel better."

Light finally looked up, fixing Aizawa with an utterly devastated gaze, as though to tell him that such a suggestion – that _coffee_ could _possibly_ make him feel _better_ – was absolutely ludicrous.

"Light, _please_," Matsuda pleaded when Aizawa averted his gaze.

Light finally took the cup, though didn't drink it – only gazed unhappily at the steamy infusion.

They all sat there in awkward silence, sipping coffee in succession; and eventually Aizawa pulled out a packet of cigarettes with a deep sigh.

"You smoke?" Matsuda asked, perplexed.

"Trying to quit." Aizawa lit one and offered the packet around. "Was almost there, too."

Matsuda and Mogi refused, and though Aizawa didn't offer them to Light in knowledge of his age and the fact that he didn't smoke, the teenager suddenly put out his hand, still gazing down at his cooling coffee.

"Ah, Light… I don't think your father would—" Aizawa started.

"My father isn't here," Light breathed slowly, his fingers shaking. "Please can I have one…?"

"Well, considering this situation…" Aizawa lit one up for him and handed it across, despite the disapproving glance from Matsuda. "Just don't make a habit of it. It's bad for your health."

"Hn." Light dragged deeply on the thing and immediately started coughing, his lungs unused to being filled with smoke.

"See?" Aizawa said dully, not coughing at all as his blackened veteran lungs inhaled the noxious cloud. "They're connected to allsorts of killer crap… Cancer, asthma, heart attacks…"

Matsuda opened his mouth and Light snappily headed him off, coughing a little more;

"Ryuzaki… didn't _smoke_…" The boy rubbed at his hairline with clawed fingers, cigarette weaving a curled frond of smoke between two of them.

"I was going to say like _Kira_," Matsuda responded quietly.

"Too much sugar can cause heart attacks too," Aizawa pointed out. "Ryuzaki was always poisoning himself with _that_ instead…"

_But that's not why he's dead_, Light thought in despair, the bitter taste of smoke making him want to retch; _it's because he poisoned himself with __**me-**_

…_And I killed him._

* * *

Three cups of coffee and half a pack of cigarettes later, the door finally opened again and Chief Yagami walked in, silent and with a heavy contagious air of defeat about him.

"Chief…" Aizawa partially rose from the sofa, resting his hand on the arm of the couch.

Chief Soichiro Yagami said nothing for a moment or two, stopping before them and giving a quiet sigh; and then…

"Ryuzaki is dead."

Something inside Light jarred violently; as though the scales that tipped first one way in favor of L's death and the next moment tipped in quite the other direction had suddenly _snapped_ and clattered to the ground under the pressure that he was putting on them. He knew L was dead, he _knew _it; but to hear his father state it so bluntly in those three unquestionable words made his insides _writhe._

He slammed his fists down on the glass surface of the coffee table, making the whole thing shake, and then leapt from his seat and stormed from the room – half-acting and half…

…terribly _not_.

"Light, where are you going…?!" Chief Yagami called after him.

Though, when they heard him yelling for the Shinigami, demanding that she show herself and explain exactly what the hell had happened, they all sprang up and followed suit, like lost sheep – lost without L and now scrambling after Light instead.

Light knew he wouldn't find Rem – he wasn't looking for her. L's death had brought her own upon her, and Light was glad. It solved his problems – and besides, he didn't know if he had it within him to look at Rem now and be _civil_ to her, let alone not want to kill her all over again.

He found her remains in an adjacent room – nothing but a nondescript pile of sand and ash. He crouched and plucked her personal Death Note from it, shaking it off before slipping it into the back of his jeans.

He leaned up against the wall for a moment or two, closing his eyes. This blade was double-edged and he was having a hard time holding the seams of himself together, and that was bad because right now he _needed_ to able to think rationally. The actual apparency of L dying had hit him broadside with unexpected force, leaving him wide open – well, _smoking_…? Light didn't _smoke_. And if L's death had made susceptible to even _that_…

He took a deep breath or two, then called the rest of the team in to show them the remains of Rem; and spoke dully of avenging L's death and solving the case and like sheep they all agreed with him, parroting his words, echoing his sentiments, and Light gave a small nod and left the room, his breath ragged.

His father followed him out, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Come on, Light," he said wearily. "It's been a long day."

Light gave a small nod, rubbing at his auburn hair.

"What time is it?" He asked quietly.

"Eleven o' clock."

Something _else_ jarred unpleasantly in Light, making him shudder and stop just as his father had managed to get him walking.

_Eleven o' clock._

"Where's Ryuzaki?" He demanded suddenly.

His father stared at him in bewilderment.

"Light, he's… Ryuzaki's _dead_." He reached for him. "Are you—?"

"I'm _fine_," Light snapped, jerking backwards away from him. "You didn't answer my question. _Where is Ryuzaki_?"

"Light, I am _not_ dealing with this right now," Soichiro Yagami bit out, finally grasping Light's wrist. "Come on, we're going home."

"Where _is_ he?!" Light insisted, near-hysterical. "Did you bring him back?!"

"Light." Aizawa, Matsuda and Mogi had been attracted by the teen's half-shrieks, and now the foremost detective reached out and placed a hand on Light's shoulder from behind. "Just calm down, okay? I know this is very stressful—"

"_God_, just… just tell me where he _is_!" Light wailed, rounding on Aizawa; his father still clutching his wrist.

"He came back with me, Light," Chief Yagami sighed finally. "He's been medically declared dead so the body was released to me. We need to sort out burial arrangements—"

Light didn't want to hear all this, and interrupted;

"He's here now?"

"Yes, in the second office, but—"

Light was gone; suddenly tearing his wrist from his father's grip and taking off at full pelt down the corridor, pushing between Matsuda and Aizawa to do so.

"_Light!_" Chief Yagami started after him, the rest of the team following at a jogging pace.

Light was fully aware of them following him, but got to the second office long before them, banging the door open, breathless. It was dark, so he blindly groped the wall for the switch, illuminating the room with a sudden harsh fluorescent glow. It was called the second office for no real reason – it was little more than an empty room with a few metal desks.

And on one of those desks he found L.

Dazed, Light made his way over to him – finding this strange, overall. Why the hell hadn't he been taken to a morgue? Unless his father was worried about those higher up finding out that L had been killed, but…

Not that it mattered. L _had_ been killed, and here was the proof.

The fact that he was sprawled on his back on a metal desk, utterly still and his skin ice-like to the touch, served as pretty good evidence.

Light felt his stomach churn uneasily as his fingers brushed L's cold cheek. It was 11:05pm. It should have been _his_ turn tonight… But instead of L being warm in his arms, he was cold on a tabletop, and the condition was irreversible.

It wasn't even _about_ that anymore, though. He couldn't bear the thought of leaving L here – of just leaving him dead in the dark in an empty room, and though it certainly wasn't as though L could _mind_, Light wasn't having it, he didn't know what he was going to do, but he lifted the detective up under his back and knees, pulling him from the desk and into his arms—

"Light!" Soichiro Yagami blazed, storming into the room. "I have had _enough_ of this nonsense! What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?!"

"You were just going to _leave_ him here!" Light cried defensively. "Leave him here, in this… _place_!"

"Light, he's _dead_!" Chief Yagami rubbed at his forehead. "What does it _matter_? We're going to sort out the funeral tomorrow, it's only for—"

"_Don't_, don't _talk_ about it like—"

"And what are _you_ going to do?!" Chief Yagami snapped, interrupting him. "Drag his corpse around with you? Light, I _know_ this is hard for you. I _know_ he was your friend, but… the Shinigami killed him. I was _there_ when they got him to the hospital. They restarted his heart _seventeen_ times, Light, it wasn't for lack of trying, but he's _dead_."

"S-seventeen times…?" Light repeated weakly, holding L close to his chest.

Chief Yagami gave a small, sad nod.

"They couldn't keep it beating. It would beat once and cut out again."

"Did… did he wake up…?"

"No." Soichiro Yagami gave another, deeper sigh. "Now come on. That's enough. There's nothing more we can do for him."

Light, for once not caring about the irrationality of it all, clutched L more fiercely still.

"No, I _won't_ leave him here…!"

"Then what do you propose?!" His father demanded, the relentless strain of the day making his temper spike again, and causing him to say things he would later regret. "Take him home? Maybe you'd like to put him in a glass coffin and keep him in your room?"

"_Don't_!" Light screeched, the _Snow White_ reference sending him over the edge.

"Light Yagami," his father thundered, "I can't _believe_ I'm saying this to you, but if you don't put Ryuzaki's body down right this instant and get yourself out that door, you'll be _grounded_ for—"

"Just let me move him!" Light begged. "Please, I can't… I can't leave him here…"

"Light, I am getting _sick_ of—"

"Actually, chief…" Matsuda pushed through from the back, looking rather abashed. "…I, uh… I think we should move him too."

He quailed beneath Chief Yagami's molten gaze, but Light latched onto his words with earnest.

"See, dad, Matsuda agrees with me." He was halfway across the room by this point, L a dead weight in his arms.

"And where are you going to take him?" Chief Yagami demanded, as Matsuda began to scuttle off after Light.

"Upstairs." And Light was gone, Matsuda slinking out after him.

The older man ended up carrying L in the end, since although L was small and hardly heavy, Light was still greatly shaken and found that he hadn't the strength to carry the dead detective all the way upstairs to the bedroom, since his legs wouldn't stop quivering.

The bedroom; and in it, the bed that they should and _would_ be sharing right now, were L not incapable of doing so.

Matsuda stood off to the side, holding L, as Light pulled the covers of the bed back. If Matsuda had half a brain, it probably wouldn't escape his notice that there was a heady stench of stale sex permeating the room (the permanent perfume in here, it seemed), nor that the sheets were stained in places.

But Matsuda said nothing at all, only held L in silent obedience; letting Light take him when he turned back, and watching as the teen gently put the detective on the mattress, resting his head on the pillow, and then put the covers back over him up to his still chest, smoothing them out as though simply tucking him in for the night.

"Hey," Matsuda said after a while, after watching Light distractedly smooth over every last wrinkle of the bedsheets, "have you ever seen that old Disney movie?"

Light tensed a little; aware of the paper bag of apples still at the foot of the bed, and his own father's callous glass coffin comment…

"_Snow White_?" He asked quietly, touching L's snow-white skin with his fingertips.

"No." Matsuda gave a nod towards the bed – at the way that Light had arranged L on it. "_Sleeping Beauty_."

_Same thing, really, huh?_

"No."

Light gazed over his shoulder at Matsuda, his voice softer still; because he'd lied to L, he'd lied to L even about lying _itself_…

"I haven't."

* * *

Light trailed upstairs on returning home with his father – almost wishing that he had Ryuk gliding after him, sniggering, because perhaps then he wouldn't feel so… _desolate_.

"Light, I want to talk to you," his father said from the foot of the stairs.

"Later," Light bit out, and went into his room and slammed the door.

Sachiko Yagami came out into the hallway wearing an apron, appearing perplexed.

"What's going on?" She asked.

"Bad day," Soichiro replied tonelessly, pulling off his coat.

Light's mother glanced worriedly up the staircase.

"Is Light alright?"

Her husband gave a weary sigh.

"I wish I knew, Sachiko."

* * *

Light _wasn't_ alright.

He tossed his jacket to the floor and flopped face down onto his bed, clutching at the pillow – though his eyes were dry and stung as though irritated by smoke.

There was a painful lump in his throat, such that it reminded him of the bite of apple Snow White had taken – though, honestly, it felt like the entire fucking _apple_…

Light felt something dig sharply into his hip as he shifted; rolling over, he put his hand into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out L's teaspoon.

The image of L dropping it shuddered inexorably through his mind and Light felt his stomach heave; though he lay there, closing his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose tiredly as though it ached from wearing glasses, and clutched the spoon in his palm.

It _hurt_ – it hurt far more than he had ever thought it would. The very thought that _L was gone forever_ yawned in the pit of his stomach like a black hole, threatening to drag every hopeful thought into it and swallow them up eternally.

Perhaps if he had broken his promise – if only L hadn't died in his arms – it might be easier to accept, might even be easy enough to slip back into his Kira mindset and actually _gloat _like he had thought he would. But L _had_ died in his arms, and Light couldn't get the image of his face out of his tormented mind. It had been so dark thanks to the power cut, and L had gazed up at him, pleading in silence to be proven wrong, and devastated further still by Light's confession, his heart broken long before the attack on it killed him, and it had been so _dark_ because—

Because there had been no Light.

(No Light; only Kira)

Though _Light_ was the one dealing with the aftermath. It wasn't Kira stuck wading through the moat of emotions and regret suddenly built up around him. He couldn't even _begin_ to think about creating a new world when he wanted the old one – the one with L in it – back so badly…

He had wanted to kill L. But he didn't want him dead.

Light shakily put the teaspoon down on the bedside table and pulled Rem's Death Note out from the back of his jeans – suddenly realizing that L's name would be the last thing written in there.

_L's name_.

No, wait… He couldn't do it here, what if his mother or father walked in on him? He could just make the excuse that he had found it with Rem's remains and had picked it up out of curiosity, but even _without_ L to suspect him of being Kira, he knew such a defense would still seem exceedingly dubious, and especially since it was the very Death Note that had killed Watari and L himself.

Light hauled himself up, shoving the Death Note back into his jeans, and slipped out of his room towards the bathroom; where he locked himself in and sank down against the door (remembering first how he had locked himself in the bathroom to escape L and then pushing the memory firmly out of his mind as he slipped the notebook out again).

He opened it carefully and flipped through it slowly, noting that there weren't really very many names.

_He_ was a far better Shinigami than Rem, it appeared.

He reached the last name, skipping over _Quillsh Wammy_ – Watari, he presumed – and traced his fingers over the letters, which were written in English, despite the fact that Rem spoke Japanese.

_L Lawliet._

Light found himself pressing the open notebook to his chest with a silent sigh, the very last of L's secrets now his.

_So your name __**was**__ L._ Because he remembered, preceding their final searing kiss, L had interrupted him, said to call him 'L', insisting that his name _was_ 'L', and… _What were you trying to tell me…?_

Perhaps the same thing Light had been trying to tell L with that notebook and playing card within it.

Nothing of anything real importance; just an acknowledgement of their game. The dangerous little game that still bled as a glittering undercurrent to the sex and the promises and the love, if that was what it could be called…

And the fact that L seemed to laid completely bare before him now – almost clinically so, given that he breathed no more and that Light now knew his name – washed over Light in a tide of acidic nerve-pinching realization, and everything inside him slipped suddenly again, so that he felt like the crumbling ruins of some ancient civilization of brilliant and empowered ideals, once great, finally coming down with shuddering force—

He threw up violently into the sink, nearly not making it with how abrupt and intense the onset was. The action brought back the taste of tobacco, which only made him retch again. He shuddered as he finished heaving, coughing a little; splashing water on his face and pushing his auburn hair up out of his eyes.

And though he found comfort in sitting on the edge of the bath for a while, his head dipped, the Death Note open in his hand, satisfied that the door was locked and that although he was in the bathroom – the most unglamorous of rooms – he was in a haven where no-one else could disturb him…

He knew that he couldn't stay in here all night.

He unlocked the door and slipped back out again into the hallway; and, looking hard at the carpet as he trailed back to his room, walked into Sayu. She was carrying a tray of tea and almost overbalanced, at which Light reached out and caught it so that it wouldn't spill. Sayu regained her stability, shaking her head a little.

"Light?" She asked. "What are you doing?"

"I could ask you the same thing," he replied moodily.

She held up the tray.

"Mom said to bring you some tea."

"Right." Light walked past her on towards his room.

"Hey, don't make me carry it the whole way…!" Sayu scurried indignantly after him with the tray, pausing at the doorway as she watched her older brother sink wearily onto his bed. "Gee, Light, you seem so sad. What's the matter?"

Light rolled over away from her, numbly impressed at how emotionally perceptive the girl could be.

"Nothing, Sayu."

Sayu came in and put the tray of tea down on the desk, then came to the bed and leaned over him.

"Doesn't look like it's nothing." She gave a sudden little gasp. "Oh, _Light_…! You didn't break up with Misa, did you?"

"What? _No_."

Light clenched his fist; yes, all according to plan, but _Misa_ was the reason L was dead. She was still alive and he wasn't…

"Oh, good." Sayu beamed. "I like Misa." She leaned further still over her brother. "God, Light, you're so pale… Are you ill?"

"I threw up, Sayu, okay?" Light snapped.

"Ew, you were sick?" Sayu started out of the room. "I'm going to get mom."

"No!" Light sat up abruptly, making his little sister jump and stop. "Sayu, don't tell mom. You know what she's like. She'll just fuss."

"But you're _ill_."

"I'm not, I just…" Light leaned back again with a heavy sigh. "I just had a bad day, that's all. Please don't tell mom I was sick."

Sayu gave a little sigh of her own – hers more frustrated.

"Okay, I won't tell, but you and dad better hurry up and catch Kira soon, Light." She began to stalk out, dark ponytail swinging down her back. "Kira's just a bad person. He doesn't even care about how much all these killings affect people…"

"People…?" Light found himself asking, turning his head towards her.

She paused at the doorway, looking back at her brother and pulling out her ponyband to set her hair loose.

"Well, yeah. Families and stuff. I mean, it's bad enough for you and dad, trying to _catch_ him, but… I know Kira kills criminals, but those criminals must have family and friends too, even if they're bad people. It must be really sad for their families and stuff – it has to hurt the people who loved them…"

She left, leaving his door open – and Light was starting to think that his _mind_ was wide open too, given how easily everyone seemed to be able to just reach into his head and claw out exactly what he was thinking. L, Matsuda, his father, and now even _Sayu_…

Light shoved the Death Note quickly under his pillow and got up off the bed, crossing to the desk and sinking into the chair. The lump in his throat still ached like he had a whole apple lodged there and although he didn't feel like tea, he thought perhaps it might ease the soreness apparent every time he swallowed.

He poured some and lifted the cup; taking a small sip and shivering even though the liquid was hot enough to scald. It was tasteless to him, and he really didn't want it. Still, he took a deep steadying breath, and sat up straight, closing his eyes for a moment or two before opening them again to glance around his bedroom.

This was where it had all started. He'd been sitting in this chair at this desk, halfway through his homework with the TV a dull blare in the background, when it had been announced that the Shinjuku Killer had taken eight hostages in a nursery school; and, out of pure experimental curiosity, he'd written his first name – _Kurou Otoharada_.

The first step of many on his Stairway of Ascension; towards his utopia, where he would rule as a god.

Light's fingers clenched tightly at the handle of his teacup. How could he have been such a _fool_ as to have let L do this to him? Corrupt him like this? L had been in his way – he had been nothing but an obstacle, one sent in to catch Kira and destroy that utopia before it had even flowered.

And now L was gone. _L was gone_, so why the _fuck_ was he upset about it?

This meant that he was free to build his paradise with his brilliance and Misa's eyes.

He looked down at the desk fiercely, because Kira's Crown had been placed back onto his head again – to be worn in grace and beauty (_as is thy right and royal duty_) – and _L_ wasn't a part of Kira's Kingdom.

And then Light glanced upwards, finding his black computer screen right in front of him – and found himself reflected in that black, the way he had always been in…

…_L's eyes_.

The cup slipped from his fingers and shattered in a mess of glass shards and hot tea on the desk; and ignoring it, still transfixed by his own soul-baring reflection, as though he could _see_ the crown glinting against his hair, Light sank downwards – because maybe this was his _destiny_, but right now, he didn't want the crown.

He only wanted L.

Light (_Aurora_) buried his face in his arms and, dry tremors racking his body, began to quietly sob.

* * *

"I don't _believe_ this…" Soichiro Yagami murmured bleakly; he and his wife were standing just beyond Light's open bedroom door, unbeknownst to him, watching their son weeping at his desk.

"Soichiro, he's still only a child," Sachiko replied softly. "Death is a hard thing to accept, and Light's never really been exposed to it before…"

"Sachiko, we are working on the _Kira_ case. Ryuzaki was only one of a _thousand_ victims, all of which Light has been exposed to."

"But…" Light's mother rested her hand on her husband's arm. "None of the other thousand victims were Light's _friend_."

Soichiro gave a deep sigh.

"I don't… even know _what_ to—"

"It doesn't matter." Sachiko pulled him away. "Come. Let him have a few moments alone…"

* * *

They were quick to bury both L and Watari, and very quiet about it. There was no funeral service, only a priest called to speak a few psalms, and only the investigation team attended. Light's father, discomforted by the presence of Aiber and Wedy – given their status as criminals and his own status as previous Deputy-Director of the NPA – had sent them on their respective ways two days before L was put to rest; and Light himself didn't even _tell_ Misa. He didn't want her there, clinging to his arm in a short black lacy Lolita dress specially selected for the occasion, probably with about six crucifixes hanging from her neck.

Perhaps her OTT way of dressing annoyed him even more now because _L_ had put in so little effort into his wardrobe; Misa wore more _necklaces_ at a time than L had clothing. Underwear, jeans, top – the uniform that he wore, even to the grave.

Though there was no service, L's black lacquered coffin was open in the church for a short while, presumably so that the team could pay their final respects to him if they so wished. Light hung about in the shadows, avoiding the kaleidoscope patches of stained glass, until the last of the small throng had filtered out. Once he was the only living person left in the sanctuary, he approached the coffin slowly and numbly to gaze one last time at the man who had died in his arms. After that first night which pushed his mind over the edge cowed Kira into respectful silence while the rest of him was dragged through an emotional thorn thicket, screaming, crying, and vomiting his disbelief all over himself, he suddenly felt a great weight settle on his chest which deadened those hysterics in him, but simultaneously left him feeling completely detached. As though his entire emotional vocabulary had been shouted at L's death and left him hoarse and silent at the funeral.

At the funeral of Ryuga, his friend; or L, his enemy; or Ryuzaki, his lover…

L had been so many things to him, and become such a huge part of his life, whether it was through trying to kill him or being chained to him or fucking him or being fucked _by_ him…

And now he simply lay here, still and white and cold. That brilliant mind was silent, for once not processing percentages or deductions. And soon they would shut the coffin up and bury him forever, and Light didn't think he could _stand_ that, the thought of L being taken and put in the ground. He didn't want them to take him away, he wanted L to open his eyes, fix him with a small knowing smirk and climb back out of the coffin, for it all to be another of his sick tricks designed to make Light confess to being Kira, for him to stand in his horrible position in front of Light and gaze at him boredly and—

And _what_? Have his ass arrested for being Kira? He'd as good as confessed, after all.

No, maybe it wouldn't have to be like that. He could just take L away, just take him and run; maybe get away from Japan, go somewhere where they'd never be found, and he could just keep L with him, like a prisoner, so that he could never escape and expose Light as Kira, maybe put the handcuffs back on so he couldn't run away, and it would all be okay, they'd just be together, both Kira and Interpol be damned—

And then Light came back to his senses; and when he did, he found that L was still lying in his coffin, stone-cold dead, and so such half-concocted fantasies were pointless and painful.

Though he wondered…

He looked quickly over his shoulder – no-one was watching him, engaged in grim discussion outside in the hall – and then dipped down and kissed L on the mouth.

His lips were like ice and it felt _odd_ for him not to greedily respond, but that was the truth of their final kiss. And of course Light had been stupid to even think of it, but…

L didn't wake up (though, he supposed, even if there _was_ truth in it, the spell usually went "True love's _first_ kiss" and _that_ was definitely not their first kiss…).

And knowing it was over, Light slipped his hand into his pocket and extracted the sheet he'd torn from Rem's Death Note – the sheet that had killed L Lawliet, his name callously scrawled across it in a furious hand. It was carefully folded three times into a small square, and Light reached into the coffin and slipped it into L's cold hand.

_Since it was your last secret…_

And his last secret and murder weapon went to the grave with him; buried beneath a cross with no name on it, being that it _had_ been his last secret.

He and Watari were buried in the early hours of the morning, the sun just beginning to break through the gray membrane of the horizon, to keep witnesses to a minimum, since it had been decided essential that no-one find out that the greatest detective in the world, and also the world's greatest hope, had been killed by Kira.

Light stood clustered with the others in a small knot around the grave after it had been filled (every shovelful of earth like a pen-stroke on paper…), the November wind toying with his hair and his tie. His suit was grey and sharply-cut, shirt crisp and white beneath his jacket, tie as ebony as L's eyes and hair and grave.

His mother had once fussed over how handsome he looked in this outfit, but what he wouldn't give to be, at this moment, naked but for a sheen of dry, stale sweat, hair stuck to his forehead and bedsheets stuck to his body, with L sprawled half on top of him, actually asleep.

Though L was asleep forever now; six feet beneath Light in the icy silence of his grave.

When the others finally trudged away in silence, Light didn't move. His father glanced back at him, standing alone before the cross, and decided against calling his name.

Matsuda paused, however, looking back at the boy.

"Light," he said, trailing off.

"Matsuda. Leave him." Soichiro Yagami walked past him without another word and Matsuda took a final look at Light before turning away and following.

Knowing they'd left him behind, Light sank onto L's grave; first to his knees, and though his throat ached again from tears he would not allow to fall this time, somewhere within him there was also a strange desire to throw back his head and start _laughing_.

He gave authority to neither action, however, momentarily thankful for the shroud of numbness that could suppress such outbursts. After a few moments of gripping at the fresh grave dirt, he pulled himself to a sitting position, leaning his back against the stone cross marking L's nameless grave.

And taking a breath, sat in silence (_with_ L, in a lot of ways) and watched the sun rise over the glinting jewel of technology that was Tokyo, as he had before, hand-in-hand with L.

And despite it all, their final _aurora_ was as beautiful as any.

* * *

For those first few weeks, Light Yagami lived in the agony of what he'd done – the ripple effect of killing the man that he had loved had strange and far-reaching consequences. He often found himself glancing to his left while in the investigation office, thinking that he could see L in his periphery, perched in the empty chair in his usual odd position.

L wasn't there, though. He was never there.

He found that he had no appetite, lay awake long hours – and when he finally got to sleep, his dreams were haunted by apples and spinning wheels and L.

_Sometimes it was sex; at other times he relived the moment of L falling still in his arms; and then there were the nightmares, where he'd find himself standing at L's grave and in the silence, the ground would shake and L's white spider fingers would suddenly claw through the earth and then all Light would be able to do was stand there in utmost horror as L started to haul himself out of the dirt of his resting place. He was never some kind of zombie figure, half-rotting and determined to eat Light while he still screamed – he always emerged as though they'd mistakenly buried him alive, unscathed but for the filth of his gravesoil. He'd reach to his waist and have no more leverage, and though then that would Light's chance to run, he never did – only remained there, transfixed, as L grabbed hold of the cross headstone and used it to drag the rest of his body out of the ground. And he would stand there still as L got to his feet and approached him, his dark eyes seeped with nothing but pure hatred, and his breath would quicken as the detective would reach and grasp a handful of his shirt and pull him close, close enough to kiss him, though he never did, all he ever whispered was "I loved you…"_

Despite the horror those dreams filled him with, Light found himself drawn back to L's grave almost everyday, as though _obsessed _with the cross; and L never _did_ claw his way back out of his grave to remind Light Yagami of his betrayal. Light would be ever alone to file unseeingly past the endless rows of gravestones with names and dates, only to stop and stare at a blank cross near the back of the graveyard. Its empty unrevealing nature was much like L himself; it had taken Light an age of uphill highbrow mind games to fill the single gothic letter in with a face and a personality.

He found that L had unintentionally nested himself into Light's libido, and the sudden gaping absence left his body hurdling over the inconsistencies. One night he couldn't think of L (even the tame, fully-clothed, non-perverted version) without suddenly sporting a raging hard-on and hair-triggering in the shower like he was an inexperienced hormone-addled adolescent. And then the very next night, he couldn't even get up at _all_; his flesh suddenly as dead and unfeeling as L now was, six feet below.

The bedroom he and the detective had shared while chained together (and afterwards…) was cleared out, though Light took nothing of L's, even though it was offered. He still had the teaspoon L had dropped at home in his desk drawer, and though it was a rather meaningless and even _stupid_ memento, it was all he wanted.

(Though he lay on the bed for a while, alone and in silence; breathing in the mingled scent of himself and L on the sheets, beginning to fade now, and remembered all those dusty, breathless nights and gold-kissed mornings in which this bed was their Kingdom – no disapproving elders, no Misa, no _Kira_; nothing but a fairytale dream…)

Mogi was the one to box the rest of it all up and send it via airmail to Wammy's House, Winchester, England, which was where they had all decided it probably belonged.

As the weeks and months wore on, however, breaking into 2005 and beyond, and though he wouldn't have deemed it possible at first, his mind numbing grief began to fade. And even that slight fading wasn't so much a lessening of loss, as it was a re-evaluation; he started to focus more on the reason _for_ L's death. The gleeful snickering shade that had never really left Light even in his sorrow, but simply quieted down and waited for the emotional storm to pass before getting right back up from where he left off.

_Kira_.

Taking on L's role in the team to keep those higher up satisfied that the legendary detective was still leading the investigation, Light had Misa move into his rented apartment with him, so that he could keep her close and use her eyes. Misa was of course delighted to no end by this, thinking it only a step away from being Mrs Light Yagami, and Ryuk came along for the ride, his wicked sniggering at everything ever the same.

Living with Misa was completely different to living with L – but then again, Light supposed that _he_ was a completely different person, too. He hadn't had his memories of being Kira whilst chained to L, and that aside…

He hadn't had the one person he'd ever actually loved _die_ in his arms at that point either.

Sometimes he looked at Misa and hated her simply because she wasn't L; he wanted to slap her for being blonde and female and energetic.

But then again… he supposed that if she _did_ remind him of L, he'd probably hate her even more.

Even so, where L had been a major hindrance to his cause, Misa was a godsend, and together they upped the ante of Kira's judgments, so that the death toll rose higher and higher still. Maybe he was drowning the pain of _L's_ death in a sea of deaths that were meaningless to him, but focusing on his dream seemed to numb the fact that _L simply wasn't there anymore_ considerably.

L was never gone from his mind, however. He'd caused Light too much hassle and they'd shared far too much for him to simply be forgotten. Though he had not cried over L's death but for that one time in his bedroom, the day L had died, the first Halloween following his death was hard to face – the one-year anniversary of his death (5th November, 2005) even harder.

He visited his grave both days, though said nothing; just stared at the blank cross, up which a thread of ivy had begun to crawl from the bottom.

It occurred to him that he'd never once apologized to L, even in a post-mortem sense; never stood before his grave and uttered "I'm sorry". But it seemed too late for that now, so he never said it, because what difference would it make, at the end of the day?

L would still be dead.

Sometimes his memories of their relationship would spike up of their own accord; sometimes consciously, sometimes in his sleep, even as he lay in bed next to Misa.

Misa never seemed to mind the wet sheets; changing them in the morning while singing chirpily to herself.

Ignorance was the drug of choice, and she could be blissful with her overdose.

At times he had tried to pretend she was L during sex, but it never worked. She was far too submissive and responsive and _loud _to provide even a remote comparison, though it didn't stop him from trying.

Overall, he supposed he was neutral about Misa Amane. He didn't _dislike_ her, particularly; but nor did he love her.

He certainly neither hated nor loved her with the same passion he had exhibited in both loving and hating L.

* * *

When Light Yagami had long since changed from a teenager to a young man – twenty-three years of age – he discovered that, all those years ago, L hadn't been lying about the whole "little brothers" thing.

Mello and Near became his newest headache, and he hated them _more_ than he'd ever hated L, for more reasons than he could count, though there were a prominent few that stood out to him:

He'd dealt with L and now he had to deal with these two now as _well_? And hadn't they learned from the fact that Kira had _killed_ L? And simply They weren't L.

And in that latter sense, Light found their appearance almost insulting to his memory; especially since, as the battle against them clashed on, it seemed to Light that neither of them seemed quite as sharp or brilliant as the original L.

Brilliant, certainly – annoyingly so.

But they weren't the razor edge that _L _was. It was as though someone had taken the original version and cleaved him straight in half, one part each forming Near and Mello, each dominating a different aspect of the previous L.

Still, it was Near he grew to hate more, with a blinding acidic rage, given that Mello turned out to be rather easily dealt with using his shiny new pawns of Mikami and Takada.

But Near… he was quite another story.

Quite another story indeed.

* * *

"_It is Death alone that can suddenly make a man to know himself. He tells the proud and the insolent that they are but abjects; and humbles them at the instant; makes them cry, complain, repent; yea, even to hate their forepassed happiness. He holds a glass before the eyes of the most beautiful, and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness, and they acknowledge it."_

**Sir Walter Raleigh**, from _The History of the World_ (Conclusion: On Death); (1614)

* * *

_Nate River._

Nine letters. It was only nine letters, that was all he had to do, scrawl those nine letters down on the tiny scrap of Death Note in his watch, and the last of them would be gone—

It didn't register that Matsuda had shot him until the actual pen itself hit the concrete floor of the warehouse and bounced several times before clattered to a halt – joined then by a spray of blood, and only _then_ did he feel the blazing kiss of lead.

And after his initial cry of pain, he raised his head, angered beyond belief that Matsuda – _Tota Matsuda_ – would _dare_ shoot _him_, hadn't _L_ always been right about Matsuda, he was nothing but an incompetent idiot—

So he screamed at Matsuda then, just who the _fuck_ did he think he was shooting; then saw the gun as a weapon for his _own_ cause, changed his tack, implored Matsuda to then turn his gun on _them_ – on the blasphemous, the non-believers, those would have Light captured and put to death for the sin of trying to make the world a better place; yes, Matsuda, you stupid fool, if you want to help, kill Near; kill Aizawa and Mogi and Gevanni and Hal, fuck, kill _Mikami_ if it pleases you, but _kill Near_—

The tears of rage and heartbreak streamed down Matsuda's face at those words, knowing now that Light had lied – that Light had lied to them all, all these years, and that they hadn't believed L, thinking him only desperate to cling to his ridiculous theories, and hell, hadn't L died for nothing, hadn't _Light's own father_ died for _nothing_…?

And as Matsuda cried for these sins, Light raised his bloody fingers and frantically started on the smeared "R" of _River_—

So Matsuda raised the gun and shot Light again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

Light crumpled like a wet paper doll, spasming uncontrollably as he felt his warmth spurting out in time with his heartbeat; though it was no longer enough. Matsuda started for him, suddenly galvanized to a fierceness that no one would have believed possible from his usually passive personality, bent on judgment of his own. His final bullet missed Light's skull by a fraction of an inch, and that was only because Aizawa and Mogi had grabbed him at the last moment, hauling him backwards and knocking the weapon from his shaking grip.

Light lay on his back on the warehouse floor, his breath coming in shallow gasps; the agony of being shot six times ripping throughout him. Matsuda was a lousy shot, he hadn't hit anything vital, but it _hurt_, oh god, it _hurt so much_…

He'd never known this kind of pain, never before in his entire life; not this crude overwhelming swill of agony, the burning kind of sensation from ripping flesh like paper, splintering cartilage, puncturing membranes, grating the very marrow of his bones, and twisting up his spinal column like a tangled chain. It was breaking him down, numbing his ability to even _think_; so that he lost all rationality, begged for someone, _anyone_ to help him, cried for Misa, demanded to know where Takada was, though both were useless to him now…

And in his mind, panting with unbearable pain; _…Ryuzaki, where the fuck is Ryuzaki…? How can you leave me to die like this…?_

Or Ryuk? After all this, where was Ryuk—?

Clearly _Mikami_ still loved him enough to kill himself as a distraction; and while Mikami screamed and bled to death in a showy display of arterial spray, messy red fireworks, diverting attention away from his God, Light dragged himself to his feet and staggered out of the warehouse.

He knew they would chase him but ran anyway; ran as fast as he could, which wasn't very fast at all, really it was a sort of quick breathless stagger, one hand clutching at his right shoulder to try and stem the profuse bleeding there, his right arm hanging limp against his side. His auburn hair was matted and tangled in his eyes, though he ran still along the backstreet of the warehouse lot, the sun rising beyond the crisscross wire fence.

And maybe it was a final blessing that he didn't know that Ryuk sat high above the city, Death Note and pen in hand, ready to write down the eleven letters promised to him by the action of that bored, brilliant seventeen-year-old schoolboy being the first human to pick up the notebook.

_Light Yagami_.

Maybe he was filled with regret, or perhaps it was just fear, but as he ran, pain splitting into him like white hot needles, searing his flesh as they were slowly pushed in, and then ripping entire chunks out once they were ripped back again, as though he was some sick voodoo doll that _they_ were all pushing pins into, because they _hated_ him so damn _much_, that _bastard Kira_, and they all wanted him to _suffer and die_; he thought only of his younger self, that foolish _brat_ in his prim little school uniform, getting this _wild_ idea to cleanse the world, believing that an instrument of such evil could be used for good…

Against _aurora_ blazing behind him, as he staggered still on the walkway; and saw himself, that younger Light Yagami, maybe still innocent, and _before L_, long before L had ever died in his arms, walking along with the Death Note in his hands, engrossed in the rules he would take and try to use to save the world from its own disease, in his tan blazer and pressed pants, white shirt and red tie whipping, oh, he'd been beautiful once—

And though that other, younger Light could surely not be real, some hallucination his randomly firing neurons produced, they passed one another on the alley; Light himself aware of it, while the schoolboy simply drifted past carelessly, holding the notebook in the same way he would later learn to hold L.

The pain was still present but now it somehow seemed less noticeable, less dire; and on some level, Light knew it was because he was dying, though could not bring himself to believe it. Not when _he_ had held the power to kill others for so long, though now taken from him by that damn _brat_, the spawn of L's grave-soil, Near; Nate River, with skin white as snow…

_And so it ends with this final sunrise—_

Stumbling into another warehouse, blood trailing after him in an apple-rose-red ribbon, Light started to stagger up the metal stairway, not sure where he was even trying to run to; but he could go no further, and collapsed halfway up with a small cry of mingled agony, frustration and fear.

He lay on his back on the steps, breathing slow and quaking, trying to will himself to get up, but he couldn't, he hadn't the strength to push himself up again—

And then he felt the shudder in his heart; felt corkscrew punch into his chest, and then _twist._

And perhaps it was only because he was not lying in someone's arms – that he was alone – but fear gripped him in those final seconds, winding around his chest like the ivy that had spread Maleficent's thorns around L's cross by now, because he knew that Ryuk had finally taken what was owed to him, worth more than mere apples, poisoned or not.

And struck by such mortal fear, the illusion of Kira finally dissolved within him, leaving only Light Yagami to shiver on the steps and wait out those final forty seconds in mounting terror; because Kira…

Kira had lost. Not just to Near. The point had been to cleanse the world, to get rid of the bad people, to obliterate evil…

That had been six years ago – and six years on, Kira was still here.

_Why_?

Because people wouldn't _learn_. Yes, many embraced Kira, but the only reason Kira was still _around_ was because there were yet more wicked people to judge.

There'd never truly been a happily ever after there, either.

So even _he_… was dying for _nothing_.

He saw then no crown upon his head, the truth of the mirror stripping away everything but the core of who he was, ravaging his beauty to finally show his true reflection, like that of L's boundless eyes…

He was afraid to die; and maybe if Ryuk had been standing before him, he would have begged for his life, but Ryuk wasn't, even Ryuk had abandoned him and left him to die alone, with no-one to hold him in his final moments.

Though…

In the final throes of consciousness, everything seemed to have taken on a glimmer, lines melting and colors blazing like stained glass; and although it must surely only be because his brain was being chronically starved of oxygen, he saw before him…

…_L_.

Light wanted to reach for him, but he hadn't the strength – he hadn't even the strength to call his name, the name that he knew, and had known for five years…

And L said nothing, nor did he come closer; he did not take the dying Light into his arms, though somehow it was _enough_ that he was simply _there_, that despite the fact that Light had utterly destroyed him, he had not left him to die alone.

Eye for an eye; and once is once.

And then, as though those candles of L's, over five years ago, Light fell into darkness.

* * *

**/END OF ACT II: **_**ARS MORIENDI /**_

**RobinRocks: **Aaaaaaaaand… The End! Naw, just kidding – though we _could_ end it there. :)

**Narroch: **And now here comes the inevitable avalanche of questions about "WTF are you people doing?!". Oh the suspense… Don't worry, though this seems like a cop-out ending spliced from the manga and anime, we still have an entire act to go. All questions will be eventually answered. After this is where the _real _fanfic begins. :D

**RobinRocks: **She says "spliced" because it is in fact a combination of the way that the manga and anime chose to differently portray certain events in the storyline. Though that traitor Narroch confesses to never having read the manga (I know she's seen the anime – we stayed up all night watching it in her basement, eating cereal and actually dressed as L and Light after coming back from an anime convention…), I have both read/watched it, and anyone else who has will know that Light's death in particular was done differently. The anime added this whole extra part where he runs away and dies on his own while seeing a vision of L, but in the manga, Ryuk just comes down and kills him in front of everyone. The anime is much nicer since he begs for his life and Ryuk just kills him anyway in the manga…

So we chose to incorporate Light's anime death; though L's death in this is based more on the manga version. There isn't really that much of a difference, though in the anime, they don't seem to call an ambulance; Light simply gets up and goes straight to find Rem's notebook, while L's body is left with Mogi, whereas in the anime, Light only goes to find the notebook _after_ Soichiro returns with the news that L is dead.

There was also a direct _Sleeping Beauty_ parallel in here, which was undoubtedly lost on you if you haven't seen it for a long time; the part where Light looks at his reflection at his desk (imagining a crown on his head) and then sinks down and starts crying is a parallel of Aurora's final gift from the fairies, where they place it on her head and she looks at herself and sees it as a symbol of everything she doesn't want to be and bursts into tears. At this, Flora says "Come, let her have a few moments alone"; which was paralleled by Sachiko.

**Narroch: **Any Mello/Matt fans out there? How about Near? WELL, no need to worry; this isn't the only appearance they make. They all play a large role in the final act. (Gah! I'm so excited about writing it guys!)

**RobinRocks: **Not that she has a clue about half of it, heh heh…

**Narroch: **Unfortunately, since we have finally caught up with ourselves writing this, updates are going to be a little more spread out so we can actually write the chapter. However, we will keep a regular schedule and not leave you all hanging for too long. Something like two weeks between each update. That's not too bad is it?

**RobinRocks: **And to leave the worst until last: _Poison Apple_: Act III – _Danse Macabre_ will not begin until **JANUARY 2008**. This is mostly because technically it doesn't exist yet – I have drafted nothing and until I do, Narroch has nothing to work on, so… yeah, it doesn't exist. Secondly, it seems neater to just wait until January and then start over with a brand new act.

Sorry, dudes, but it _will_ be up come January, and that's a promise (just like that promise that the apples weren't poisoned…)!

**Narroch: **Thankyou so much to everyone who has supported us thus far. Your comments and questions are what fuel this endeavor and we can't thank you enough for each and every bit of feedback we get. You are all muchly loved!

EVERYONE: GO SEE _ENCHANTED_!

RobinRocks and Narroch xXx

P.S: And BTW… the poll? Light is _still_ losing. :D


	12. Act Zero: Once Upon a Dream

Well, well, well – it's almost Christmas! Have we all been good boys and girls?

Heh, if you've been reading _Poison Apple_… then no.

Coal for the lot of you. :D

You may have stumbled over here in a pre-Christmas daze after receiving an FFNet story alert for a new chapter of _Poison Apple _despite the fact that we explicitly stated that Act III, _Danse Macabre_, would not be starting until January – this same FFNet alert may have trigged a "ZOMFGWTF?"-type reaction from you.

All I can say is: Mwa ha ha.

To explain: As you may have noticed, this is referred to as "Act Zero", which is basically the smart way of saying "This chapter has no plot-furthering relevance to the storyline of _Poison Apple_". Yup, it's nothing but an excerpt – or a flashback, to be more precise, to the night before L dies.

Which… is the smart way of saying that it's a chapter of LxLight "pr0nz", hahaha.

How n00bish.

Why the sudden appearance of this scene on its own under the ridiculous title of Act Zero? Well, initially, it was going to go into _Ever After_, but… _Ever After_ is like four years long as it is, and honestly, due to the nature of _Ever After_… it's not exactly relevant, either.

To be honest, I thought people might complain about the fact that the last night L and Light shared together wasn't ever described (but you didn't, about which I am not complaining!); but despite the fact nobody seemed to mind, I am just going to chuck it at you anyway as a "Christmas gift" (Thankyou for reading _Poison Apple_, Merry Xmas, kthnxbai! xxx) because I'm just nice like that. :D

I would like to offer this to one person in particular, given that I am terribly surprised that she didn't complain about the fact that _Ever After_ lacked this scene – the one and only **Nilahxapiel**, rampant LxLight supporter. Love ya, Nilah; this is for you, ya little L-seme-lover (even though you touched on L-as-uke wonderfully in _Phlegethon River_, it must be said). Also mentionable are fellow LxLight supporter **Serria**, and my long-time pal **AutumnDynasty**, who whined about the whole January thing, and also gave me an apple necklace for Christmas… :)

Um, also, I have to confess right now – this is kind of a Christmas gift for **Narroch** too, considering… she didn't co-write this chapter with me. I just did it by myself, and thus she's probably reading through this with the exactly the same "WTF?!" reaction…

Sorry, Narroch; you know I love messin' with you too much… And I figured I'd let you off just this once, since I've been really pushed for time concerning it and you'd never have gotten it done in time – I finished this in the early hours of this morning. I'm such a slave-driver with this fic… Though no doubt you'll bitch about all the awesome lines you could and would have added.

But, well, it's for _all_ of you!

Right, well, do enjoy; if anyone wants me, I'll be in ur base killin ur d00dz…

* * *

_Oh, how could I face the faceless days if I should lose you now?_

_We're so close to reaching that famous happy ending;_

_Almost believing this one's not pretend—_

_Let's go on dreaming though we know we are so close_

_So close; and still so far…_

- _So Close_; from Disney's _Enchanted_

* * *

Poison Apple: Act Zero

Once Upon a Dream

There was a dreary sense of ironic foreboding that night, present even (though perhaps first and foremost) in the way that Light Yagami turned up at the bedroom door; clutching a paper bag of polished crimson apples, reminiscent even then of the Wicked Queen in her disguise, offering poor little Snow White a treat laced with her undoing.

"You're late," L said quietly, on opening the door and seeing him standing there, munching on an apple of his own; Light knew that, and preferred to reach into the bag and pluck out another apple to offer to L instead of excusing himself.

"Love apple?" He asked flatly.

L didn't even blink.

"You're late, Light-kun."

"I was buying apples." Light pressed the fruit into his white hand as he sidled past him into the bedroom.

"It doesn't, to my knowledge, take twenty minutes to buy apples."

"Oh, yeah." Light shot him a sour smile. "That's because I was poisoning them all as well."

"Right." L bit into his own apple, ignoring the ironic threat, shutting the door. "You always give me apples, Light-kun. Do you think I'm a Shinigami?"

Light shrugged.

"You like them, don't you?" He watched L moodily crunch at the ruby fruit. "Besides, no offence, but _you_ seem to think that Shinigamis eat birthday cake."

L raised his eyebrows.

"It only seemed polite to offer her some."

Light shrugged.

"Well, can't argue with that."

"You didn't answer my question, though."

"Hm?"

"My question." L paused over the final few bites of his apple. "Do you think I'm a Shinigami?"

Light blinked.

"No, Ryuzaki. Of course not."

"Yes," L agreed absently; he passed Light, going back to his apple, and went to the mirror at the desk. "I don't look like Rem-san."

"Why would you?" Light asked, perplexed.

"Well, that answers the question for itself, don't you think? Clearly I am not a Shinigami…"

"Well… all Shinigamis look different, Ryuzaki."

L looked sharply at him, dark eyes glinting.

"And how would you know such a thing, Light-kun?"

"Why would they all look the same?" Light snapped in reply. "All _humans_ look different."

"You sounded certain," L said dully, "as though you have seen others…"

Light gave a small shake of his head.

"Okay, I admit, it was just an assumption. I just don't see why they would all look identical."

He came behind L, wrapping his arms around the waist of the smaller man.

"You and I," he said softly, resting his chin on L's shoulder, "don't look the same."

L glanced up at him, dark eyes wide.

"_You_ are a Shinigami, Light-kun?"

"No." Light gave him an affectionate squeeze around his middle. "Human, like you. Neither of us are… Shinigamis."

"Mortal."

"Yeah."

L suddenly pulled loose.

"I beg to differ. I had a thought, you know."

"Oh?" Light watched him trail away towards the bed, chocolate eyes glinting with interest.

"A 'Shinigami' is a god of death; that is, we can conclude that they have the power to deal death, or at the very least have the ability to bestow upon humans the means of dealing death – Death Notes. So wouldn't we be right in therefore concluding that any human with a specific means to deal death would be… a Shinigami also? Figuratively speaking, at any rate."

Light gave a small shrug.

"You'd call Kira… a Shinigami?"

"Ah, Kira clearly thinks himself a god without my input, but regardless… Consider this; L was brought in to catch Kira. Would that not then make L _Kira's_ Shinigami…?"

Light rolled his eyes, coming to the bed.

"You're reading to much into this. Do you _want_ to be a Shinigami?"

"No."

"Then forget it. Discussing this… isn't why I'm here, after all."

"Right." L's eyes suddenly narrowed. "Because you were late. You never answered that question either."

"I was buying apples." Light smirked. "And poisoning them, of course."

"Of course." L took both apple cores and placed them daintily side by side on the dresser. "Will I die soon, then?"

"Absolutely."

L glanced at him.

"That's a dangerous answer, Light-kun."

"It's a dangerous question, Ryuzaki."

"You're so callous about it, Light-kun."

"Because I'm _joking_." Light gave a sigh. "Why has nothing changed, Ryuzaki? The rules of the Death Note proved that Misa and I are innocent, and yet you still suspect us exactly the same amount."

"That's not true, Light-kun. The percentage has dropped slightly. It just isn't at zero, and won't be until we test the notebook."

"Yet we just carry on here, as _though_ nothing has changed."

"I do not think that is true either, Light-kun."

Though L said nothing more on the matter, suddenly grasping at Light's shoulders and pushing him down to the mattress, crawling on top of him to pin and kiss him suffocatingly. And through being suffocated, Light reached beneath him, his hand squirming down to the older man's crotch and grasping at it in his own deductive manner, feeling the bulge beneath the worn denim.

L broke the kiss, jerking away from him at the intrusive action.

"You're already hard." It wasn't a question on Light's part; more of a smug statement.

"Perhaps I should remind you again," L breathed dangerously, "that you were _fifteen minutes late_."

Light gave a humorless little laugh.

"Am I that much of a drug to you, Ryuzaki?"

"Shut up, Light-kun, or it will be all the worse for you." L's eyes gave a wicked glint. "It _is_ my turn, after all."

"You mean you're a sadistic bastard."

"I never denied it." L breathed it against the boy's throat. "Never once, Light-kun."

"You're not supposed… to confess… to that…"

"It is not in my nature to deny what I am, Light-kun." L paused, his gaze glazing over. "I am not Kira, after all."

And wasn't that true; the Wicked Queen had disguised herself, but Maleficent had never resorted to such concealment.

Though then there was the manifestation of her true nature—

But that was something else entirely.

* * *

L wasn't one for letting Light go down on him – because although it left Light as the one on his knees before him, perhaps it left _him_ feeling vulnerable.

And for the record, Light wasn't really one for going down _on_ L – because it left _he_, Light Yagami, God of the New World, on his knees in front of the detective who had sworn to catch him, and he honestly didn't really like the taste of him anyway.

Light preferred to be the receiver in this circumstance, which he usually was, given that neither of them were really very comfortable with it the other way around; L enjoyed the power and Light enjoyed the feeling, given that L's apparent oral fixation had made him very, _very_ skilled with his tongue.

That talented mouth could tie cherry stalks into knots, after all.

Regardless, and inexplicably, it was L who had fetched up on his back tonight with Light between his legs, fingers threading in that auburn hair, because no matter his ultimate dislike of this particular combination (_his_ cock in _Light's_ mouth rather than vice versa), it still felt pretty good.

And if Light wanted to be on his knees twice tonight, that was his own choice.

Light was fully aware of that, and still wasn't exactly sure why or how this had happened – L was a far better giver than taker when it came to fellatio, since the bastard pulled at Light's hair and bruised his shoulders when receiving, distracting the boy immensely.

Still, it had seemed right, minutes ago, to push L down against the pillow and unzip his jeans and hold his hips to stop him squirming in half-hearted protest as the shorts came down, followed by Light's mouth.

And it was nice that L had jerked against the mattress, nicer that he had hissed "Light-kun…!" in a tone that was more pleasured than annoyed, and nicest that, if only for just a moment, the mighty genius detective was completely under the thrall of a boy seven years his junior.

Though, as a rule, L was animated only as long as he chose to be; and after that moment was up, he seemed to relax, and simply lay back, hauling at handfuls of Light's auburn hair as the boy dutifully went at it with the same vigor he had exhibited right from the start.

But L's expression had begun to flatline now; fading downwards from rapture to drowsy pleasure to the usual bored sort of look he preferred to adopt, and eventually he pushed Light's head away.

"Let me, Light-kun," he said breathlessly.

"I… you _always_ do this…!" Light protested.

"I prefer it this way." And, sitting up, L twisted their positions, forcing Light to the mattress. "I prefer to give."

"I'm not a sex doll!" Light snapped suddenly; aware that L's preference to give left _him_ as being L's preference as the one to receive.

"Of course not." L made short work of Light's pants. "There would be no benefit in performing oral sex on a doll."

"That wasn't what I—"

"But _you_…" L suddenly leaned close to his face, smirking a little. "There is much benefit indeed, wouldn't you agree?"

He didn't give Light time _to_ agree, rather showing the boy how to do it _properly_ – oh, yes, it had been a nice little effort, everything Light did always _was_, and he was good for it sometimes, but you didn't make an art out of eating lollipops without knowing a thing or two about how to use your tongue.

And though Kira was loathe to be won over so easily by L, Light was all too delighted to have Ryuzaki demonstrate yet again what it was that he apparently just wasn't getting right – yes, this was how it was supposed to be…

L sucking Kira's cock, not the other way around.

Oh, if only the masses could see this scene – those who stood with Kira and those who stood with L, silenced in their battles with each other, both entranced and appalled by the fact that, while there had yet been no apparent conclusion to the case, the two figureheads of the situation were at least finding ways to amuse themselves.

It was nothing but a _slap_ to the masses, really; hey, look at that, your savior is sucking ours off…

Or, rather, on that note, Light knew it was a slap only to those who vouched for L – despite the fact, in the context of only Light and Ryuzaki, privately in bed together (which was the honest truth of the matter), _L_ was in fact the one with the power over Light, to a Kira supporter, this scene illustrated purest defeat over _L_.

So Light's smile was two-fold, as was his pleasure; he stroked L's ebony hair and let himself moan, because _everything_ about it felt _so_ good… He didn't particularly like to bend to L's will, as Kira, but then again, reasoned that he was trained in the act of it by now, trained to give and seek pleasure in this – this bed was an alternate reality to the one that waited outside the bedroom door. The idea of Kira and L sleeping together was utterly insane, given that they were also warring against one another in the battle for Supreme Justice; yet this world of sweat and bedsheets was like a mirror-realm, which they stepped beyond the glass to enter, and there, amidst twisted reflections, it didn't seem to matter how fucked up everything was.

It didn't matter that Light arched into L's mouth with a low, breathy moan, stunned on another level that the action hadn't caused the detective to choke; and though Light was Kira, God of the New World, swept away by L's ministrations, it didn't really matter to him how submissive or begging an action it was.

Though as his breathing pattern quickened to panting, shot through with little cries of gloried delight, L suddenly pulled away and sat in his regular position, leaving him on the brink of brimming despair; and Light sat up, breathing ragged, and pushed his auburn hair from his eyes with an angry sigh.

"What… what _now_…?" He hissed.

"Nothing." L tilted his head; and Light hadn't noticed until now, but the older man had actually pulled his own shorts and jeans back up, zipping them, though leaving the button undone. "It's just that this is…"

He put his finger in his mouth, consulting the ceiling.

"…Boring?" He finished finally, his tone exhibiting an interrogative rise.

"_Boring_?" Light repeated, his own voice wrapped in barbed wire; that word seemed horribly out of place in a situation like this, where he was very aroused, and with L perched in between his legs.

"Yes." L gave a shrug. "There is no variety in this."

"What kind of _variety_ were you thinking of?" Light snapped, growing very annoyed; really, how _dare_ L leave off pleasuring a _god_…?

"I don't know." L suddenly reached down to the side of the bed and pulled another apple out of the paper bag Light had brought. "This just seems terribly unfair."

"Well, if you remember, I _was_—"

"No, not that. It's just that… I can't see you when I'm down there."

"Does that matter?" Light griped.

L gave a nod, shining the apple on his sleeve.

"I like to be able to see you, Light-kun." He held up the blood-red apple so that Light could see himself reflected in its shining skin. "You are very beautiful."

Ah, was this acknowledgment and worship of the deity? Light gave a small smile – half-calculating and half genuinely gratuitous for the compliment. He reached out and touched L's cheek just as the detective brought the apple back to his mouth to take a bite; pushing the apple aside and slipping his hand down to the back of the detective's neck to pull him close and kiss him. L, however, immediately took charge of the kiss, pressing his hands against Light's shoulders and pushing him down against the mattress a second time; and, still aroused, Light ground upwards against him, denim and cotton creating warm friction against his erection. L's hands came to his hips to hold him still and stop him doing it, though Light squirmed against his grip in frustration.

"Beautiful, but impatient, Light-kun," L said, breaking the kiss.

He smiled at him; that very rare, very sincere smile that performed such magic upon his features so as to make him suddenly look as innocent as a child, even though the truth was quite the opposite.

And then he sat back and started to eat the apple.

"I think I know what I would like," he said. "For me to pleasure you is predictable, since I know what I am going to do next. But you… While I pride myself on being to read you rather well, Light-kun, it is true that I cannot read your mind. Your own actions would be immeasurable to me."

"But you pushed me away!" Light said incredulously. "And now you want me to… what? Jerk you off?"

"No." L's smile had darkened considerably. "I don't want you to touch _me_."

"Then…" Light's chocolate eyes widened. "Oh."

"Yes." L tilted his head again. "Oh."

"I… that's…" Light gave a small shake of his head. "You're such a _pervert_, Ryuzaki."

"Always, Light-kun." Another bite. "Regardless, I'd like to watch you."

And, when Light did nothing but stare at him, he arched an eyebrow under the thicket of dark hair, commenting;

"I'm waiting."

"Why should I bow to your every whim?" Light snapped.

"Oh, you don't have to, if you would prefer not to," L replied airily. "However… I wish for you to know that I will not be relieving you myself. By all means, feel free to sit there and allow it to go away on its own, though I will tell you from experience that it isn't a very comfortable or pleasant occurrence."

L said no more, going back to his apple; leaving Light staring at him in incredulity. It was clear that L obviously had no intention of finishing what he'd started, and so, though Light didn't like to play into his hands, what choice did he have?

Scowling, he started to unbutton his shirt.

"Leave it on," L said suddenly; Light glared at him.

"_Why?_"

L shrugged.

"Just keep it on, Light-kun."

Light was annoyed and perplexed, wondering what odd tune of L's flute he was being forced to dance to. This was certainly one of the most bizarre things L had ever asked him to do, detailing even which garments he was allowed to remove and which he wasn't. He was naked from the waist down, apart from his socks, but now L wouldn't allow him to remove his shirt either, for some reason.

He was about to reach down and take himself in hand – more for L's sick pleasure than his own – when the detective suddenly spoke again;

"Take off your socks, Light-kun."

Light glared at him again.

"_Why?_" He intoned lethally.

"Because I dislike socks." L reached out with his free hand and grasped the end of one of Light's white socks between his finger and thumb, tugging it off with a single flick of his wrist and tossing it over his shoulder to the bedroom floor. The second one joined it as L reached for Light's bare feet.

"Get off!" Light pulled his knees up, taking his feet out of L's reach.

"I wasn't going to hurt you, Light-kun."

"I know, just…" Light kept them away from L's wandering hands. "I don't like people touching my feet."

"I give good massages."

"I don't want a massage from _you_, freak!" Light snapped.

L gave a soft little laugh.

"Ah, look at Light-kun, being all shy…"

"Shut up, pervert." Light's flaring temper wasn't doing his condition any favors and he reached down to himself with more thought for his own relief in mind rather than L's enjoyment.

Besides, 'shy'? He, Light Yagami, _shy_? He was God of the New World – he'd made a name for himself by being the scourge of the criminal classes, ridding the world of their very presence. He had dozens of admirers, both male and female, was top of all his classes, and used to be the Junior Tennis Champion.

"Shy" wasn't in either his description or his vocabulary.

That absolute pervert _bastard_—

"But you'll still indulge my perversion?" L bit into his apple again, crunching thoughtfully on it. "How very kind."

He watched Light stroke himself with interest – but it was strangely detached, as though he was watching him through a sheet of glass, or in a specimen jar. He came no closer, even when Light started to shudder and rock, panting with every thrust into his own hand; and through his heady haze of self-inflicted delight, Light couldn't help but note that L sort of reminded him of Ryuk right now.

Just sitting there, interested enough to watch, but with no real passion for the subject; eyes wide and glazed, eating an apple.

"Does this… turn you on… pervert?" Light hissed at him.

"Hm?" L glanced at him. "Oh. Yes, Light-kun."

Even then Light couldn't help but blink at him. There was no emotion whatsoever in his voice, so that his words sounded sarcastic and untrue.

Maybe they were.

Light didn't care at this point. He was doing what L had asked – what more did he want?

Observing that Light's breathing was growing yet more ragged, L asked him if he was close.

"Y-yeah…" Light hissed through gritted teeth.

"Good." Another bite of apple. "When you reach orgasm, I want you to say my name."

Light glanced up at him through hooded eyes.

"Your… name…? Wh-which one…?"

L shrugged.

"Whichever one you like."

"I… I don't…"

"Shh. No talking. I only want to hear you say my name."

Light still gazed at him, confused; was this another test? Did calling him by a particular name up the percentage that he was Kira?

Though acting dumb around L was not something Light usually had to employ, when the spring coiled within him released and he spilt himself over his hand in a sudden hot rush, he played it safe and cried "Ryuzaki!".

"Interesting," L muttered, more to himself, as Light lay back on the sheets, fighting to get his breath back.

"You… you were testing me," Light panted.

"I was, Light-kun."

"What… did you want… to hear?"

"Oh, there was no preferred outcome." L finished the last of his apple, dropping the core to the floor. "It was simply an experiment with no decisive conclusion. A matter of interest, really."

"I… see…" Light gave a small, breathless nod.

L suddenly pounced at him, making him give a little cry of shock as the detective pinned him to the mattress by his shoulders.

"I had a dream once, Light-kun," he said, gazing down at Light scrutinizing, gaze hot and dark eyes metallic. "It was about a week ago. I dreamt that you confessed you were Kira."

"I'm afraid that dream won't be coming—" Light started.

"I wasn't finished. I was going to say… that we were in the middle of sexual intercourse when you confessed it."

Light blinked at him.

"What…?"

L shrugged.

"It wasn't a confession made in pleasure. I believe it was a conscious desire; it wasn't taunting, nor was it kind. It was simply a statement of fact. You looked up at me, and said, very clearly, "I am Kira"."

"Dreams can be… weird, Ryuzaki."

"I am aware of that. I don't believe that it was precognitive in any way, Light-kun. If you _are_ Kira, I don't expect you to ever confess simply of your own volition."

"Then what was the point of the dream?" Light snapped. "And why are you telling me about it?"

"Because… it didn't _change_ anything," L said softly. "You said that you were Kira, I said "I know", and then we just carried on with the sex."

Light blinked.

"Seriously?"

L gave a nod.

"That's crazy," Light went on. "That we'd just continue if we both _knew_ that—"

"Is it?" L's words made Light look up at him, whereupon L continued; "Do you think it's crazy?"

"Of course."

"But do you only say that because you say also that you are not Kira?"

"I…"

"Because I don't think it's crazy," L went on. "I see it like this. I still believe that there is a chance that you are Kira, Light-kun, and I know that I am L. So, in that actuality, there is a three per cent chance that L and Kira engaging in intercourse is fact. Likewise, you know that I am L, so if you were Kira, knew you were Kira, and are simply concealing that fact from me, then it would in fact be a percentage of one hundred that the statement "Kira and L are sleeping together" is true."

"But that doesn't stop you."

"No."

"Then what is the point of this conversation?" Light snapped. "Whether I _am_ Kira or not, you're still going to screw me tonight."

"Yes, that is correct." L glanced at the ceiling. "…I wonder if it would feel different?"

Light gave a snort.

"I doubt it."

"I didn't mean physically." L shot him a withering look. "Mentally. Right now, I only _suspect_ that I'm sleeping with a murderer; and sometimes, when I grow to doubt that suspicion, I almost forget it. But if I _knew_, if there was no doubt in my mind that you were a murderer… I wonder how it would feel…"

"You're sick, Ryuzaki."

"It's a perfectly logical thing to wonder about, Light-kun, aside from being functional hypothetical reasoning."

"How do you mean?"

"Kira is, beyond a doubt, a very powerful individual," L said drolly. "To me, he is nothing but a murderer; but to others, such as Amane-san, he is a god. Think then how differently Amane and I would perceive a sexual encounter with Kira."

"If Kira wasn't me, then why the hell would you be sleeping with him?" Light asked, bewildered.

"This is merely psychoanalogical speculation, Light-kun. Humor me."

Light gave a sigh.

"Right, okay, I understand. Yes, I can see why it would be different, and not just because Misa's a girl and you're not…"

"How crass, Light-kun. I'm surprised at you."

Light gave another sigh as L looked at the wall with interest.

"I have an idea, Light-kun," he said after a while, still looking at the wall.

"Yeah?"

"Yes." L leaned over Light again, grabbing at his shoulders. "I'm going to pretend that you're Kira tonight."

At first Light was alarmed; then furious; and then, finally, tiredly rubbed the bridge of his nose, and said;

"You _already_ suspect me of being Kira."

"That isn't what I said. I said I'm going to pretend that you _are_ Kira."

"_No_, Ryuzaki," Light hissed. "This is the sickest thing you've tried to get me to do, and I am _not_ doing it! I'm not pretending to be a mass murderer so you can get off on—"

"You don't have to do anything. I'm just going to alter my mindset for a while."

"No way." Light tried to kick him away, violently unsettled by this sudden epiphany of L's.

Okay, so he really _was_ Kira; L suspected that, but he didn't know it. But now he was going to pretend that he _did_, that there was no doubt in his mind that Light was guilty, and Light just didn't know what kind of things L would do to someone he truly believed was a mass murderer, given that the detective was sadistic enough to Light as it was.

He still grimaced when he remembered that first night, when L had raped him in retaliation; how cruel he had been, and the _chain_—

L paused, gripping Light's wrists in his impossibly strong grasp.

"You can fight me," he said slowly, "but ultimately, you can't _stop_ me from pretending that you are Kira, Light-kun."

_I __**am**__ Kira, you psychotic nutjob!_ Light thought furiously, still wrestling with the smaller man above him. _And if I had your real name…_

"Maybe I can't stop you," Light agreed in a low voice, "but I _can_ leave."

He managed to squirm loose, writhing out from underneath L's bony form, and slid off the bed—

Only to have L snatch his wrist, those long, cold fingers tightening and suffocating like veins of ivy. Light wheeled to look back at him, scowling.

L smirked at him, ebony eyes glassy and glimmering.

"No, you cannot, Light," he said in English, the foreign words having more impact as Light had to think to translate them.

He hauled on Light's arm, overbalancing him and throwing him back to the bed, where the teenager landed on his back on the mattress with a grimace.

"You can't leave," L said again softly, switching back to Japanese. He leaned close; so close, and so lethal, that even though Light knew that L would soon be dead, he was suddenly very _afraid_ of him, and shivered when L whispered in his ear; "…_Kira_."

* * *

The pervert must have dreamed about this _more_ than once, was Light's reasoning; or at least he must have fantasized about it on more than one occasion, for he seemed perfectly practiced and unhesitating in his actions.

That thought was both sickening and thrilling in equal measure – to know that L had thought about doing this to Kira. Maybe it had been different in L's head – maybe he'd imagined it to happen in Kira's cell, after he'd caught him, with his most prized catch at his mercy; or perhaps in some wild dream world, draped with black silk sheets, scattered with glowing apples and drenched in crimson light.

It was clear that he was pretending that Light was Kira – there was something different in the way that he held him, ran his fingers over the teen's bare skin, a gleam of a slightly different nature in his dark eyes.

Though still unsettled, Light let him get on with it – after all, he _was_ Kira. So maybe this was to be the truest encounter ever between them, for Light to know he was Kira and L to pretend he knew, and for them to treat the experience in that way.

Thus his kiss was more aggressive – L was usually demanding in his kiss, though never usually so hostile. Light knew it was a challenge – a challenge to Kira – and rose to it, though was careful to hold back just enough so that L wouldn't read into it and decide, via some wacky theory, that he truly _was_ Kira.

Even if it was the truth.

Light wondered indeed exactly what psychotic side of L he'd managed to unlock now when he reached for the hem of L's white top to pull the thing off over his head and was promptly smacked away; L was one third genius, one third antisocial weirdo and one third absolute lunatic, and now Light was hoping that he wasn't about to discover that L was in fact a 'quarter' kinda guy, and this "I'll-pretend-you're-Kira-while-fucking-you-senseless" business wasn't about to cause the fourth part of the detective to awaken from its dormant state.

Uneasily, Light thought that L's pale, waif-like look made him look sort of like one of those creepy horror dolls Misa liked to collect; and with that in mind, the mental picture of him with his white top and skin spattered with blood, his long thin hands clutching a chainsaw, didn't seem ridiculously out of character.

Which was why he shivered a little when L's icy fingertips trailed over his throat.

"Ah, Light-kun," L murmured on seeing it, a little mirth tinting his voice, "we're pretending that _you_ are Kira, not me."

"Wouldn't Kira… shudder at your… I mean, L's touch?"

"Perhaps." L smirked. "Don't tell me you're going to act the part."

_This __**is**__ the act, my dark-eyed beauty…_

"Or maybe," L went on, right on cue, "_this_ is the act, Light-kun?"

"Or maybe you just _want_ it to be?" Light fired back.

L's smirk soured, though remained in place.

"Always so defensive, Light-kun."

"Always so sick-minded, Ryuzaki." Light couldn't resist grabbing at L's crotch again, the bulge pushing up against the zip of his jeans. "You're such a perverted creep, you know that? This is seriously turning you on."

"Terribly deviant, isn't it?" L tilted his head. "Or perhaps it's a compliment to you, that I would still be attracted to you in the knowledge that you are in fact Kira."

"It's only pretend, Ryuzaki," Light said uneasily.

"Is it?"

"Yes," Light went on firmly.

L blinked slowly at him; then gave a shrug, kneeling up to kiss Light's auburn hair.

"If you say so," he said emotionlessly.

"Ryuzaki—"

"Shh. No." L pressed his forefinger to Light's lips. "That's enough. You've made your point. It really doesn't matter right now, do you see?"

"No," Light said quietly, pushing L's hand away. "I don't see."

"It is unlike you to confess such a thing, Light-kun."

"That's because I don't usually find you this confusing."

L's smile was like glass.

"Is that so?" His thumb touched up against that smile. "The truth is, I cannot say for sure how long you and I have left together."

Light unconsciously gripped at the bed sheets, though L didn't appear to notice the action.

"Why do you say that?" He asked, the question very genuine indeed.

L gave a shrug.

"There are many factors against us, the fact that you yourself may be Kira aside. There is your father, for one thing – I am about ninety-seven per cent certain that he suspects and disapproves of us engaging in this sort of relationship, and I know for a fact that Watari also does not approve. There is the Kira issue also – we both know that my position as L is dangerous, and that perhaps I have been a little too confrontational concerning Kira at times. And even—"

"Stop," Light interrupted, kneading his forehead. "Just stop, okay?"

"Does it upset you?"

Light gave a sigh.

"You're being a drama queen, making us out to be the doomed lovers or something—"

"Are we not doomed, Light-kun?"

"This isn't _Romeo and Juliet_, okay?"

"Ah, I just feel that… our relationship is built on nothing but death." L tilted his head. "Ironic, then, that you mention _Romeo and Juliet_? They both ended up dead."

"Built on death?" Light repeated blankly.

"The only reason we came together," L answered softly, "is because of Kira. Because of Kira's crimes, because your father and I are being counted on to stop him, because you're a _suspect_… The foundations of our relationship are built on the corpses of criminals, executed by a self-elected god."

"Nice imagery," Light said flatly.

"But it's the _truth_."

"Well, it's also true," Light snapped, "that we're not both going to end up _dead_, so cut it out."

_Just you, L..._

"I don't think I agree," L said softly, "but it's meaningless right now, isn't it? There is nothing we can do to change it; if there was, then it wouldn't be this way…"

_Would it be…?_

Light considered that as L finally began to unbutton his shirt, slipping it down over his shoulders carefully, like gently pulling a silk ribbon loose from an exquisitely-wrapped gift. L gave a satisfied little noise that sounded like an odd kind of purr, tongue lapping at the dip of the boy's collarbone. Light leaned his head back, feeling the ends of his own neatly-cut hair brush his back between his shoulder blades as he did so; and then arched his back with the grace of a dancer, forehead almost touching the headboard, when the kisses began to trail a searing path down the middle of his slim, supple chest and over his belly.

L smirked, fully dressed; while Light scowled down at him, completely naked, as the detective licked and kissed at his navel, the action making the teen squirm restlessly. He placed his hand on L's head as he starting sucking at the flesh of Light's stomach, at which he unlatched his mouth and looked up at him.

"You like this, Light-kun?"

Light gave a sighing little nod; then opened his brown eyes, shooting L a puzzled look.

"Why are you still dressed?" He asked..

L blinked at him.

"Would you like me to remove my clothing, Light-kun?"

"That's the usual practice, isn't it?" Light snapped.

"Things seem different tonight…"

Fed up, Light again grabbed the hem of L's white top and this time was successful in hauling it off over his head, the cotton dragging across his ebony hair and sparking it with static, fluffing it up.

"Stop being so melodramatic," the teenager snapped, throwing the balled-up long-sleeved top into L's face, where it landed half on his head and hung there.

"You are impatient still, Light-kun." L pulled the top off his head and threw it onto the floor, kneeling up and allowing Light to see him properly; as he had countless times before, yet still the boy's gaze washed over him, interested in every last detail.

It was either Light's gift of intellect or L's habit of converting every probability he was faced with into percentages, but there was something mathematical about the detective's form apparent to Light whenever L removed some or all of his clothes. Maybe it was just because he was so sharp and bony he seemed to be nothing more than a squirming structure of various mathematical angles – his elbows and ribs and wrists and hips, narrow and angular beneath that near-translucent white-as-snow skin.

Light could see it now, gazing up at him, topless and with his unbuttoned jeans riding low on his slender hips, wispy beginnings of a slight snail trail leading down from his lower belly just visible in the small gaping "v" the loose button left. Though he did not appear skeletal or anorexic, the faint hint of every bone in his arms and torso was visible beneath his pale skin, so that he had the appearance of perhaps a puppet, or a wooden doll.

L was beautiful in a very strange way, but he was not art; he was mathematics, logic.

As Kira, Light was building a paradise – one worthy of paintings, fine literature, music, the exquisite human arts.

And though Light had a great respect for the science of logic and mathematics, they didn't belong in Paradise. He could see it now – L didn't _belong_ in Kira's Kingdom. Yes, it was a utopia for those who were good and pure of heart, and perhaps L was one of those – he certainly wasn't a criminal (though he'd make a damned good one, was Light's opinion…).

But despite that, he still didn't belong in that utopia. There was no place for him.

The only place that L seemed to belong now was this bed; and Light's arms.

And he _did_ belong there, however wrong it was; though Light, as Kira, still considered L to be his enemy – one to be disposed of soon – it never once crossed his mind to stop sleeping with him. L and Kira were Angels of Justice each on their respective sides, but Ryuzaki and Light were still friends – and, more importantly, still _lovers_, however ironic either of those words truly were.

Their war was still not enough to break the chain between them (this metaphorical chain far stronger than the real one that had once kept them together).

Light's hands found their way to L's slender waist, palms resting there, fingertips to hip-bones, as L leaned down to kiss him. The boy pressed upwards into it, thinking that L must still be pretending that he knew that Light was undoubtedly Kira, though L was so often aggressive in bed it was difficult to tell.

He was surprised still at the way in which L had taken to all of this – to go from being a self-elected virgin, celibate for the most arrogant of reasons, to being this fiery, greedy, difficult creature really was rather astonishing. At first Light had mused that maybe it was to do with his star-sign – his Halloween birthday making him a competitive, hard-to-please Scorpio – but later concluded that it was most likely simply because he was L.

Still, it was hardly much to complain about. Though Light – without his memories – had resented L's manipulative, cheating nature, and Light – _with_ his memories – simply resented L dominating him, there was no denying that the relationship between them as more satisfying _because_ they fought. There was a sense of pride in winning the constant battles of words and wits and dirty tactics.

It might be nice to have L as putty in his hand, the way he had Misa, but he supposed he might tire of the older man never challenging him.

Light Yagami reveled at being challenged, after all – that was ultimately why he and L were together. It was a battle far more intimate than their battle as Kira and L, but also far more bloody.

Busted and broken and torn-out hearts made such a mess, after all.

* * *

L had obviously decided that they'd been messing around, half-dressed and discussing Shakespeare, for long enough; for he suddenly stopped talking, kissing Light with more ferocity and crushing him down against the mattress. He pushed Light's fumbling fingers away from his zip impatiently, gliding it down and giving a wriggle or two to slither out of his jeans, and then he pulled down his boxers and kicked them off as well, then took hold of Light and suddenly flipped their positions, putting the boy on top.

At first Light was confused and hopeful, wondering if L had changed his mind and was going to allow _him_ to be the giver—

But then L took hold of his hips, pushing him upwards into a sitting position, and then, just as it dawned on Light with an inward groan of "Oh, _no_…", started to push the teen down, slowly and successfully impaling him.

His chocolate eyes wide, gritting his teeth, Light sucked in a breath against the pain and discomfort. To L's credit, the detective was taking it slowly, holding Light up so that he didn't impale himself completely until he was ready to, but the teen only gave a breathless groan.

"Does it hurt, Light-kun?" L asked softly, his own voice a little ragged.

"Of course… it does… _bastard_…!" Light panted breathlessly.

"I apologize. It will… feel better momentarily."

Dizzy with pain, Light doubted that, though lacked the voice and stamina to accent his opinion. Though it hurt considerably less than that first time L had thoughtlessly given it to him in the ass, stupidly entering him dry, there was no true way of ever getting used to this – he knew that L himself still felt discomfort as well, when it was his turn to be underneath.

Obviously keeping this in mind, L gave Light quite a long moment to get used to it and adjust – much kinder than Light had expected him to be, given that L was apparently pretending that Light was one hundred cent certainly Kira.

_Or maybe this isn't a game, L? Maybe you do know I'm Kira, and the kindness is your own, because you truly __**do**__ love me anyway…_

Light hissed again in discomfort when he felt L's hips hit him, both knowing and feeling that he was fully in; it was a blazing pleasure, one so close to pain it was near indistinguishable as delight. L gently rocked him forward and though Light had been expecting it, it still caught him off-guard, the feeling of it twisting tightly inside him and sending him flailing forwards, his hands slamming down on L's shoulders to stop himself falling on his face.

"I'm sorry…" L blinked up at him, one hand at Light's left hip and the other at his waist.

"It's… it's okay," Light panted in reply, shaking his auburn hair from his eyes.

Their eyes met, the both of them perfectly still, their bodies locked together in the most intimate of ways; and stillness and silence reigned between them for that frozen moment.

"I'm going to move now, Light-kun," L said eventually, breaking the spell in the bluntest of fashions; and Light gave an inward sigh as he nodded.

The boy found that gripping L's shoulders and locking his elbows helped considerably to brace himself against L's sharp, hard upward thrusts, so that he wasn't being pitched forwards every time L's hips slammed up against him; and maybe this was a bleak scene, given that Kira was being repeatedly impaled by L, urging him on by way of deep, gasping breaths and the slippery grip of his fingers on those pale shoulders…

But it _felt_ good.

It felt fucking _good_ to be repeatedly impaled by the man who'd just as soon see him to the execution chamber, had he but the evidence to send him there.

Ah, they were as bad as each other, weren't they truly? Kira and L, lost in this act of sin and beauty, while each lost in their own thoughts, concocting just how they would each drive the other to his death. Perhaps L had never laid pen or pencil or blood to enchanted paper, but he had to power to deal death too, Light was perfectly aware of that. Just because he wasn't Kira, it didn't mean he wasn't dangerous; although…

Light had always worn Kira's crown on his head, just as L had always worn his death sentence on his, but it hadn't always been like this, when Light had had his memories ripped from him; no, once upon a dream, it had never been like this—

And perhaps, when L was cold in his grave, this night itself would be a memory too, a precious "once-upon-a-dream" to Light, another of those nights when he had loved and lain with the only person he could connect with on any and all levels, lost to him forevermore…

Though his fondness was overwritten for a moment when, just as he was getting used to this particular angle and rhythm, L decided he was bored of this position; and heaved upwards on his elbows, again with a strength that looked as though it should be denied to his wooden-doll form, and flipped them completely over.

Light gave a startled, undignified cry as he was pitched again onto his back, friction of the mattress burning as he was slammed against it and the headboard; and then crying further in pain as L rammed against him, being forced deeper still by the impact of the position-switch.

"You f— …ugh… _lunatic_!" Light panted angrily, pushing against L's thighs to try and ease away from him.

"My… apologies, Light…" L replied breathlessly, the honorary being lost to his shallow gasping; and, just as he apologized, grasping Light's calves and heaving his legs up onto his shoulders, forcing them to bend at the knee as he leaned downwards, wide-eyed to mirror Light's expression, though L's conveyed curiosity while Light's only signaled extreme pain.

"…_Bastard_…!" Light managed to get out through gritted teeth.

"Ah, that's… unkind, Light-kun…" L brushed some of Light's hair from his brown eyes, smiling at him again; feeling the boy's legs flail helplessly in this position, trapped by L's shoulders so that he was practically bent double.

Light gripped at the bedsheets, shaking his head free in defiance.

"This _hurts_, Ryu— Ryuzaki… Would you please… just get the… hell on with… with it…" he bit out between gasps.

L only smiled at him still.

"Sometimes," he said quietly, "I do doubt that… you are Kira, Light-kun. Sometimes you seem so perfect, so beautiful… that it seems impossible… that you would be such… a sick-minded murderer… Though I know… that such an assumption… can reach no true conclusion… As you once said, _I_… do not look like a detective…"

Light only panted breathlessly, meeting his gaze but offering no input to the observation; it felt to him as though his spine was about to snap in two.

"This beauty," L went on, touching Light's cheek with his icy fingers, "could belie… a monster, I am… certain…"

"Hypocritical… Ryuzaki…"

"Oh? Are you calling me beautiful, Light-kun?" L's smile transformed to a smirk. "Or are you calling me a monster?"

"_Both_," Light hissed, gripping more tightly at the handfuls of bedsheets he was clutching.

"Ah, I agree. We _both_ are, I think, Light-kun."

"That wasn't what I—"

"Yes, I know." L kissed him. "Shh."

Light's cries were rhythmic as L started again; small and neat little sounds, perfectly musical. L was overwhelming tonight – maybe just because he was still, to some degree, pretending that Light was Kira (or maybe it was just because he _knew_); it wasn't that the sex was really any different or _better_, it was just that it seemed to be having a harder impact on Light yet again; an impact that almost made tears well in his eyes, bidden half by pain and half by…

Well, he didn't know.

It was just that – bent double, legs hopelessly in the air, hands twisting bedsheets – something about L tonight was making him suddenly want to…

…_Confess_.

L seemed like the true _light_ at the moment – the thing that Light himself could be, if only he would choose such a path, what he could be if only he would reject the Death Note's power, give up his crown and his kingdom.

There was something about L tonight that made him seem like a savior – and made Light want to be saved.

Maybe it was just L's stupid dream that made Light think of whispering "I'm Kira" every time he felt the detective grind up against him; made him want to beg "Save me, L" every time he pulled from him again.

_Do you think I want this; this insane chain of murders, the blood of all of which is on my hands? Do you think I meant for it all to happen like this; do you truly believe I meant for Kira to be the monster in me? Please, you're the only one both brave and mad enough to stand up against Kira; you're the only one who can save me from him; I'll confess, and I'll reject it all, if only you promise to save me, L—_

Until eventually the warped braid of thought was wiped over by white; by that ultimate sinful bliss, one familiar to him, and the final pleading of Light Yagami to be saved was quelled. Kira resettled in him as the tide of ecstasy subsided to a glowing aftermath – feeling on another, detached level that was L was still going at it, hot and slick and hard inside him, and though he still didn't mind that he was being screwed by his enemy, he no longer believed L capable of pulling Light from Kira's clutches.

L was just L, muttering breathlessly in English as he pounded himself against Light's battered body; death warrant signed, sealed, delivered and nailed above his head.

L grabbed at him as he hit his own peak, needle fingers digging into Light's hot skin and making him wince; as though trying to hurt him, to know that he was really there. Apparently satisfied by Light's hiss, L leaned back, pulling himself out and letting Light's legs slide own over his arms and onto the mattress, the boy sighing in relief.

Light was waiting for L to say something – he usually did at this point. Something incredibly unromantic; either blunt or sarcastic or categorical.

But although he paused for a moment or two above Light, as though debating whether or not to speak, L eventually said nothing at all, distracting himself by pulling up the sheets and bringing them down on top of himself and Light; and then slid down, lying perfectly on top of the boy, and wrapped his arms around his neck.

Despite himself, Light found that his own arms made their own way around L's slender waist as their mouths met; the kiss begging for something on L's part, though Light did not know what, and didn't ask.

Perhaps, once upon a memoryless dream, Light had seen L as the only one who could stand against Kira; but now he saw that it wasn't true.

L wanted Light to save _him_; even though he surely knew that it wasn't be so. Hell, maybe he'd had _other_ dreams of Light confessing, where Light then killed him—

And maybe he'd dreamed also of Light loving him; of saving him, and being saved _by_ him.

And maybe yet of that old world, before Kira existed; for yes indeed, that had existed once, a world in which the time left until L's death was not displayed over his head for all who would care to give half of their life to see, or a world in which Light Yagami was not this beautiful but monstrous creature, a poison apple clutched in L's hand—

Yes, that paradise had existed once; _once upon a dream._

* * *

Wow, that really didn't have very much direction, but…

It wasn't really part of the plot, so it's all good. Hope yallz enjoyed it!

Damn the pair of them, they keep going off on random conversational tangents halfway through an intimate scene… I know that is really my fault, given that I'm the one writing it, but you'd honestly be surprised… It's like they're writing themselves, and are all like "Bitch, we wanna talk about Shakespeare!".

O.o

Oh, and I finally saw _Enchanted_ (and bought the soundtrack, hence the lyrics at the start)! Go see it if you haven't – it's so _good_! It's about time Disney spat out something good that wasn't Pixar…

AND it has poison apples, the phrase "just one bite" and a song called _Ever (Ever) After_. :D

Anywayz, Merry Christmas to you all! Thankyou for reading, reviewing and supporting _Poison Apple_! It really means a lot to us that you guys like it so much!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and seez y'all in January for Act III; from RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx


	13. Act III: Danse Macabre: Justice

Okay, okay, so we said January 2008 and by that you probably thought we meant, like, the first week of January 2008 or something… Sorry. But, it _is_ still January 2008, and we're finally back with Act III of _Poison Apple_, 'Danse Macabre'.

About bloody time, huh?

Thankyou all for your patience – I hope _Act Zero: Once Upon a (Completely Irrelevant) Dream_ at least helped to tide you over a little.

But _this_… This is the true storyline of _Poison Apple_. My original thought for this fic whilst wandering around Disneyland Paris wearing a Sleeping Beauty tiara and linking arms with my equally-sad friends was "If L and Light had THAT kind of relationship and, in the end, Light killed L anyway… what the heck would both of them do if L were to be resurrected?".

Act I: _Fairietayle_ was needed. It was no good just starting the fic here and putting "AN: L and Light had a sexual relationship before Light killed L, lolz". But _Fairietayle_ wasn't the true story – _Fairietayle_ was just the foundation that makes _Danse Macabre_ more painful.

Act II: _Ars Moriendi_ was simply a separate, one-part act chronicling their deaths, in canon with the anime/manga. Not needed, especially, but we wanted to put it in.

Act Zero… well, that was just me messing around. :D

If you're still reading this AN, I think about now is the time to bow out and let you get on with reading – if it may not be too arrogant to assume you've been anticipating this even just a little.

Do enjoy. :)

* * *

_Pain, without love;_

_Pain, can't get enough;_

_Pain, I like it rough—_

'_Cause I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all._

_- Pain; _Three Days Grace

* * *

Poison Apple

Act Three: _Danse Macabre_

Justice Here No Longer Lies

Physical things follow natural laws; non-physical things do not— Or so one may plausibly think. But even raw soul matter, as intangible as it gets, can be affected by gravity. It has nothing to do with self-will, for in death, there is no self, and there is no will. But if there are outside forces, and if the pull is strong enough, even those locked deep in oblivion can for a second break the surface, and let consciousness spark through the icy nullity.

_Colder than ice._

The freshly-crystallized sensation of chill doom might have stolen Light Yagami's breath; yet he had no breath to be stolen from him. It was a coldness that he could not truly feel, was only aware of the memory of the sensation – knew if he had the capacity to feel it, this total freeze, forcing even electrons to an impossible standstill, held in the thrall of absolute zero – it would kill him.

However, that would constitute the belief that he was still alive, and just like his non-existent breath, he had no life to be stolen from him either.

What was this – this _wasteland_? This strange, soundless, soulless, oblivion of nothingness, this—

…_Mu_…?

He had been granted awareness, suddenly dragged up from beneath a dark, depthless sea of eternal sleep; he could know that much, know that this awareness had not been his to possess only moments ago.

_Aurora, awoken from her spellbound sleep—_

However, it was an exercise in futility to be given awareness, but not existence – somehow he knew it was cold, but couldn't feel it, knew he was surrounded by a canvas of blazing blankness, bound up in a womb of static gray, but could not see it; he was simply suspended in time and place, with no means to move and nowhere to move to.

It was not enough. The awareness needed a frame, a point of reference from which to tether its reality. His identity couldn't hold together when it was so hopelessly strung out, sculling through impermanence.

Could he even be considered _himself_ anymore? It was certain that he had no body, no breath, no thoughts, really; only _awareness_. And even that was not the fiery distinctly-shining thing it had once been; instead sentience was arbitrarily lulled together in impoverished waves of realization, spread out in dull misty understanding. It was as if his consciousness had been dissolved into a numb ocean, and now his thoughts were spread over miles, diluted by the nothingness until everything that could constitute as a sense of self was only a question of amount and degree.

A degree of awareness that knew it had once been a part of a boy called Light Yagami; a boy, or a man, or a god.

A _murderer_ who had met his own end, but…

How long ago? After how long was he suddenly waking up? A year? Fifty years? A _hundred_?

Along with his body, and his sense of self, he had also lost the capacity to gauge time. Though in a place like this, it was debatable if time even existed according to the human definition of it.

_And where am I? Is this the 'Mu' that Ryuk spoke of? Is this the punishment for the user of a Death Note? …Am I still Light Yagami…?_

Was _this_ nothingness; or was what he had – or, more appropriately, _hadn't_ – known before the true nothingness? Was it nothingness to know nothing at all – to simply be dormant, incapable of thought – or was it more of a paradox? Suspended timelessly in oblivion, in so-called nothingness, even though he could comprehend it and therefore couldn't be classified as _nothing_? What was Mu? Was it this, or was it the unfeeling darkness of death…?

It was as if he was dead, yet forced to retain some vital spark which allowed him to experience the non-feeling of being dead. It didn't make any sense, and despite the impossibility of it, it wouldn't go away. The blankness he couldn't see was oppressive; the coldness he couldn't feel was an ache that he couldn't feel either; these thoughts that were not truly thoughts, the struggle to dredge up memories that were no longer his to possess, it was—

_I can't… I can't stand this, I'll go mad; to not feel, to not see— Maybe this isn't Mu, maybe this is __**Hell**__, I can't __**stand**__ this, anything… __**anything**__ would be better…!_

They weren't words really, but it was what he would have thought if he could round up his faculties fast enough to give meaning to the words, it was the message he felt on an ineffable level. He wanted to scream, but had no means to do so; no voice, and no sound, there was no sound here, nothing at all, and why was he suddenly _here_, he hadn't been here before, he had not been thrust into this torment, this maddening spectrum of perpetual nonentity.

Knowing nothing at all was better than knowing this; surely, surely _pain_ would be better than this…?

_Pain_.

The thought of it, the word, each of those four letters… They curled around his fragile awareness like fine wood smoke, and etched themselves back into his memory, perhaps lost from it before, and it triggered something; perhaps the memory of how to feel it, or maybe it was just a desire coming true, the wish to feel _something_, _anything_ other than this overwhelming sensation of nothing at all—

Agony enveloped him; and he couldn't pinpoint its location, since he had no body attached to his consciousness, but it _hurt. _Nerve endings being slung out into the void, shriveling in on themselves when exposed to the vacuum of nonexistence, and yet still able to feel every exquisite ounce of pain that flashed through the imagined nerves, despite them not being attached to anything. He felt like he was being boiled alive, and yet couldn't scream, couldn't thrash, couldn't even cry because there was nothing there, which made it even worse. This torture, no, no, _nothing_ was worse than this…!

He focused on that desire, to return to numbness, beaten and crushed down beneath the pain radiating from nowhere; though this time the wish didn't work, and again he desperately yearned for the ability to scream, though he _couldn't_.

And then… something other than toneless white trickled up over the horizon, tinting the milieu with foreboding.

_Red_.

Red, bleeding into his unseeing view, staining the white, spreading like blood from a gunshot wound, closing around him, gathering him together; and then darkening, as though congealing, and…

…He _could_ see it! Not just a perception of it, but actual visual images. But then… the color darkened further, became a drooling _black_, and then he was wrapped in darkness and splitting pain, both stimuli becoming nearly indistinguishable, and though he still had no body, the pain had gathered itself up to a central point, a tightly-coiled ball radiating agony…

If he _had_ a body, it would be in his _heart_.

The intensity of the precise sensation overwhelmed him completely; and maybe he was simply dying all over again, maybe this was punishment for his sins, for him to relive the agony of his death over and over— His brief awareness was suddenly eclipsed by the pain, and he knew nothing more.

* * *

_'Where death is I am not; where I am death is not, so we never meet.' _

- Epicurus

* * *

Light Yagami opened his eyes with a sudden gasp; a gasp that felt like a first breath of air after coming up from beneath the surface of a pool, having stayed under just a moment longer than was comfortable.

His eyes darted around the room, instantly evaluating the surroundings. It was dark – but not an oblique blanket of ebony, rather morning-dark, the sunlight blocked by the curtains at the window.

Light lay on his back, his eyes wide, his breath shuddering with every intake of his lungs as he fought to claw his way out of the panic that still hung around him in an oppressive hazy shroud.

A dream…?

He put a trembling hand over his heart; felt it beating frantically beneath his pajama top and his skin and his ribcage, but most importantly felt it _beating_.

_I'm alive…_

The realization snagged on something he couldn't quite comprehend, and refused to settle correctly. Light shook his head, dismissing the disquietude as a leftover from the dream. He dragged himself into a sitting position, rubbing tiredly at his auburn hair, wondering what time it was. He hoped he hadn't slept through his alarm. Damn Misa, why hadn't she—

Without warning, the realization ripped free and poured the truth of his memories over him, instantly chilling him to the core as he remembered things he had no business remembering, let alone experiencing.

_Wait… I'm __**alive**...?_

Maybe that terrifyingly vivid plane of nothingness and pain and… Well, maybe _that_ had been a dream, but… No, all those things; he had knowledge of things that surely couldn't have _all_ been dreams, knowledge of things like…

…his _own death_.

_I died._ Light gripped at his own shoulders, rocking forward a little_. I died, I know I did… I remember it, I remember Near, and I remember being shot, and I remember running…_

Unless…

Maybe he _hadn't_ died? Maybe he'd gone into a coma? Maybe he'd been found, taken to a hospital, maybe…

No, no, that couldn't be it; he'd felt the undeniable pain in his heart, known then what it had meant, that Ryuk had finally kept his promise—

Automatically, Light felt across to the bedside table, picking up the digital alarm clock he kept there; he brought it over into his lap, looking dazedly down at it…

And promptly dropped it when he saw the date.

11-5-07.

_5th November, 2007…?_ Light blinked down at it, speechless. _But it's __**2009**_…

And 5th November… The anniversary of L's death. A date he never forgot, even if he was quiet about it.

_This has to be some kind of… sick joke…_

He looked across to his other side; the bed was a double one, but the other side was empty, which meant…

_Where the heck is Misa…?_

With alarm still shouting his disbelief at the normalcy of the situation, Light pushed back the covers and got out of bed, crossing to the window and pushing back the thick curtains. At once the room was illuminated by weakly-filtered early morning sunlight. It was a crisp November morning, nothing at all like the stormy day on which L had died, and Light pressed a hand up against the cold pane of glass in the window, looking out over the familiar view of Tokyo's west side that he knew like the back of his hand.

He turned back to the room, glancing over it now more critically with the help of the sun, and knowing it. It was the bedroom of the apartment his father had rented for him after L's death – the one he had had Misa move into with him.

That made sense – if it _was_ November, 2007, then this was where he would be, but…

Despite the logic of waking up alive in his room like every other morning, his mind was still on playback in the warehouse, making the scene before him seem wrong. He didn't trust it, any of it.

He left the bedroom, going into the bathroom next door, thinking Misa might be in there doing her makeup. He was actually _hoping _to find Misa for once, but there was no trace of her; though he caught sight of his own reflection in the mirror and couldn't resist going over to it, firstly just looking at himself, and then pressing his forehead up against the glass and breathing out against it to mist it up.

_I'm alive…_

Had time reversed itself? Was it okay for him to believe that? He didn't know how it could have happened, his brain still floundering in the unfeasibility, but…

He was speaking here as the owner of a notebook that could kill people. A power that he hadn't doubted for an instant longer than necessary. Once its ability had been proven, he hadn't questioned the mechanisms for how it worked, instead dumping the impossibility of it all in the out-box for the shredder to deal with later. He found himself in a similar situation now, unable to wrap his head around it, with the enormity of the idea threatening to crush his logic. He numbly decided to reserve judgment until he found more clues, and continued on normally as if he _couldn't_ imagine how it felt for a bullet to pierce flesh.

He searched every room of the small apartment, calling Misa's name; but she was nowhere to be found. Maybe she had an early photo shoot? Or sometimes she went off to other countries for fashion shows, he remembered that. She might be in Paris or New York or London or LA or Prague…

But then… Where was Ryuk? Although attached to Misa, he never usually went with her on work trips, preferring to stay with Light and watch him wreak mayhem as Kira. So even if _Misa's_ absence could be explained…

Ryuk's couldn't.

_What the hell is going on here…?_

Light went to the kitchen, suddenly desperate for coffee; maybe to stop his head from pounding. Maybe he _had_ been dead, but right now, he felt very much alive, and had the nagging caffeine headache to prove it.

He flipped the radio on, the flow of fluent Japanese spoken by Shinji Fujiwara, the show's host, coming to his ears almost like music; for indeed, it felt as though he hadn't heard anyone speak for _years_… And, as he boiled the kettle, he heard Fujiwara mention the date, and unless the whole of _Tokyo_ was in on this sick joke, Light could only conclude that somehow it really _was_ 5th November, 2007.

Somehow… he was alive. He'd defied the Death Note – even if he _had_ had to die to do it.

Sighing deeply, Light sank into a chair at the kitchen table, sipping at his coffee. His head was still throbbing, though the bitterness of the coffee was helping a little, slowing up all the thoughts and memories still shuddering and jostling each other inside his skull. It felt like the experience of having all his suppressed memories flooding back into his mind, all those years ago; though these were more scrambled still, since they were so much more painful, and for the moment, he couldn't even bear to think about them.

He preferred to just sit here, taking deep breaths interspersed with sips of his coffee, with the morning sunshine streaming in like a cool bellini, shimmering pale gold across the kitchen floor, and marvel at the fact that he was goddamn _alive_.

At first he didn't notice the shadow fall across him and the table; and, when he did, he merely blinked at it, slow on the uptake that…

No, wait; he almost laughed.

"Hey, Misa," he murmured.

He wasn't prepared for being grabbed by both shoulders and hauled off his chair; nor for being tossed to the kitchen floor, his cup falling from his hand and shattering on the tiles, slinging hot coffee and thick porcelain shards everywhere.

"What the…?" Light sat up angrily. "Misa—"

Though there he cut himself off with a strangled gasp, for it was not Misa who stood over him, imposing and expressionless.

"…_L_…" Light whispered, eyes widening to the circumference of saucers, as his already-fragile sense of reality promptly crumbled once again beneath the gaze of someone he knew beyond any doubt to be dead. Only reality didn't seem to be playing fair as his nightmares became true; and just like every truth apprehended by finite human intelligence, it must, by its very nature, only be the husk for a deeper meaning.

A meaning Light wasn't ready to unravel.

L said nothing; he didn't even blink, just gazed down at Light, who was trembling before him.

"Y-you're… _you're dead_…" Light finally breathed, his whisper barely audible over the pounding of his heart.

L tilted his head a little, finally speaking;

"So are you."

* * *

The moment of recognition, the striking realization that this reality had more than one inconsistency, loomed before him like a delta. It was a turning point in how he saw the world, a critical juncture with many metaphorical streams branching out before him, each going a different direction, each with a different reaction, and each one valid in its own way. There was a choice present, but like most difficult options in life, with the outcome shrouded in the uncertainty of the future, and the present not having the preferable option of waking up and pretending it was all just a strange whacked-out dream, he wasn't given the time necessary to deliberate and map out his course. Instead he was just pulled down the current, sucked involuntarily into the path of least resistance.

And so while Light's rationale floundered and drowned in the surging riverhead of impossibility, the rest of him could only float limply behind and fall into the well-worn routine of interacting with L, a method that not even time and death could erase.

Eventually easing himself up off the floor and slowly, numbly, going back to his seat was the only thing he could do, despite the frightening situation which had somehow thrust him in the presence of his greatest accomplishment and simultaneous greatest regret. He half expected L to kick him down again once he had built up enough nerve to try and move, but the dead detective didn't twitch at all, only gazed at him, black eyes training his every movement. He too seemed trapped on the same current that adhered Light to his chair, the path of least resistance; at least until Light could get his bearings and attempt to rescue his mangled logic.

Denial was a good start.

"This can't really be happening… This is insane," Light murmured, his gaze fixated on the surface of the kitchen table, unable to look at the one he had murdered.

"Insane?" L said softly. "As insane as a notebook that can kill? As insane as a boy who thinks himself a god…?"

"There's a rule!" Light snapped shakily, looking up at him angrily. "A rule, in the Death Note… I don't remember the number, but it says… it says something like 'A human killed using the Death Note can never come back to life'."

"You're referring only to me?" L's voice was duller than it had ever been; his timbre deader than Light remembered it, and its muted quality sent shivers down his spine.

"_You shouldn't be here_," Light whispered blackly.

"You died too. You can't deny it, because I know you can remember it."

"But time has been reversed!" Light blazed, bewildered anger forcing the tremors out of his legs, as he stood and slammed hands down on the table. "I don't know _how_ or _why_, but it _has_; and so it's right that I should be alive at this time! But _you_… you died before this. _You died three years before this!_"

"And I suppose you would like me to die again." It wasn't a question. "To be out of your way once more, Light-kun."

Light felt himself wince at the "kun" part; maybe because L was the only person who had ever added it to the end of his name. Maybe because he hadn't heard himself addressed as "Light-kun" for so long…

"So what are you?" Light bit out, looking L up and down across the table. "A memory? Ghost? Vampire? Zombie?"

"No," L answered flatly.

He didn't look any different; still had the white-as-snow skin, the messy black-as-ebony hair, still wore the too-big white top and loose jeans. If Light did not have the vivid memory of L dying in his very arms, he never would have been able to tell that this scene was disturbingly wrong; that _this_ L couldn't possibly be L. It was as though he had simply climbed back out of his coffin.

Unless—

Light's head snapped up as he focused on L again.

"Do you know where Misa is?" He demanded.

L gave a slow shake of his head.

"I feel inclined to point something out to you, however," he said blithely. "Given your usual sharpness, I am surprised you did not notice it yourself…"

"_What?_"

"Amane-san is not here; nor _should_ she be."

"What do you mean?" Light's eyes narrowed. "If time really has reversed, she should be—"

"Have you come across any trace of her in this apartment, Light-kun?" L tilted his head. "Any indication that she is living here with you, even if she is not present at the moment…?"

Light slowly rose from his chair, the results – or lack thereof – of his earlier search for the young model dawning upon him with a horrible draining coldness that trailed through his veins like iced dread.

There _hadn't_ been any traces of Misa. He'd been too overwhelmed to really register it, but L was right; there was nothing of hers at all in the bedroom or the bathroom or the living room or the kitchen. Even if she _had_ gone away for a show or shoot, the place wouldn't be _completely_ cleared of her belongings…

And Misa's permanent absence also explained Ryuk's.

Shoving L aside (internally surprised when he found that yes, L _wasn't_ just a visual hallucination), Light half-ran from the kitchen back through the apartment to the bedroom, just to be certain; and sure enough, on getting there and throwing open the wardrobe, he found not a single item of PVC or Lolita lace; the dresser was absent of chokers and crosses on chains and bracelets and earrings and lipsticks and eyeshadows and mascaras.

What was going on here? Was this an alternate reality, in which Misa was…

…_dead_?

And one in which… L was alive? Could it be possible that this was an alternate world, where L had avoided his fate and instead caught Misa, sending her either to jail or the execution chamber?

That would explain Misa's absence and L's presence in her place; and if this was the truth, then Light was in an extremely dangerous position.

But… no, wait, L had spoken of being dead, seemed to know that he _had_ died, and that _Light_ had died… Surely, if this was simply an alternate reality, L wouldn't have memories of dying, nor would he know of a future in which Light too would also die.

Glancing over the nearly-empty dresser again, Light found his cell phone, picking it up; he went into his address book and scrolled down, searching for Misa's name.

There it was: _Misa Amane._

So she _was_ still alive – she must be, otherwise he'd surely have deleted her number by now…

He hit _Dial_ and brought the phone to his ear, listening to it begin to ring. She didn't answer, however, and he was only put through to her message service, which he wasn't interested in, and so he hung up with a deep sigh.

Even if this wasn't an alternate reality, a concept he still balked at, things had clearly changed in this timeline. Why wasn't Misa living with him? He'd never have been so stupid as to break up with her – she was too valuable to him, having traded again for the Shinigami Eyes.

In the reflection of the dresser's mirror, Light tensed up as he saw L enter the bedroom, having followed him.

"Why are you here, Ryuzaki?" He asked tersely, his grip on his phone tightening; the question spanning L's presence in more than just the bedroom.

"I'm here because you are here, Light-kun. And please, if I might make a request?"

"_What_?" Light bit out.

"Don't call me Ryuzaki."

"What?" Light said again. "That's what you _told_ me to call you."

"That was before… Well, it was a long time ago."

Light glared at him suspiciously.

"Three years isn't—"

"Is that what you think?" L interrupted softly. "Three years?"

"W-well… I…" Light trailed off, confused. "Of _course_ it's three years, if you consider the time reversal. You died in 2004; this is 2007. That's three years."

"It is true," L agreed quietly, "that, in this time, you had Rem-san murder me three years ago. But I have been dead for much longer than that, as have you."

Light simply blinked at him, suddenly very tired of all the surprises he had been bombarded with upon waking, and yet still certain that there would be many more to come before he could be satisfied.

"Wh-what…? That doesn't… it doesn't even make _sense_—"

"Of course it does. Do you think you were resurrected immediately after your death? No, that is not the truth. In this time loop, you have been restored to your original living state, given that, _during_ this time period, you were indeed alive. But you were dead before this lapse, Light-kun. You were dead for one hundred years."

Light stared at him speechlessly, unable to come up with a response that wouldn't make him sound completely brainless.

"I died four years prior to you," L continued, his faded voice barely audible across the bedroom. "I was dead for one hundred and four years. I know it must seem implausible to you, but how could you have known those hundred years? You were dead, drowned in nothingness… For you, it seems as though no time at all has passed since your death and your waking up here this morning, feeling as though it was nothing but a dream."

"Then why now?" Light burst out. "Why, suddenly, after one hundred years, if what you say is true… Why are we suddenly brought back here, to this exact time?"

"I am no authority on this situation, Light-kun. I do think, however, that you would be wrong to believe that this is a… second chance."

Light scowled at him.

"What is it, then? Punishment, do you think? How could this be _punishment_?" Light gripped at his heart, beating steadily and reassuringly beneath the fabric of his pajama top. "I'm _alive_, Ryuzaki. I was dead – I was _beaten_. But now… now, whether I really _was_ dead for one hundred years or not… It doesn't matter. I'm alive again, and I have a chance to change my fate…!"

L gave a slow nod.

"Perhaps. But don't call me Ryuzaki."

"Why not?" Light's eyes narrowed. "You always answered to it before."

"But it's not my name."

Light's eyes widened again.

"Your—"

"I know you know it."

"_I_ didn't write it down," Light snapped.

"You manipulated Rem into doing so," L said coldly. "I know that much. Do not play innocent with me."

Light clenched his fists, irked and unsettled in equal measure by the iciness of L's tone.

"Why are you here?" He hissed. "You don't want to be, and I admit that it's understandable. You hold me responsible for your death, and I don't deny my part in it. I could understand why you would never want to lay eyes on me ever again, so _why the hell are you here_? If you're just going to talk to me like that, if you're just going to stand there and _hate_ me with every fiber of your body for _beating_ you, then get lost. I don't really want you here either."

"And where do you suggest I go?" L's deadened voice was beginning to get a little dangerous now, though it wasn't the sound of it that changed, but the very _inflection_ that darkened, as though venom had been injected into it. "I have no place in this world. Time has reverted to a period in which I am still dead. Don't you think it would create quite the stir if I were to walk into the Kira taskforce headquarters tomorrow?"

"And I suppose you think you're just going to stay here with me?" Light spat.

"After everything you've done to me… perhaps it is the least you could do."

"I'm not being blackmailed by you, you fucking _corpse_!" Light screeched at him. "You can just go the hell back to your _grave_! You just said yourself that you don't belong in the living world. Come on, I'll even be so kind as to bury you again…"

"You don't know what you're saying, Light-kun," L breathed, closing his eyes for a moment or two. "I don't think even _you_ could be so cruel, if only you knew what you were asking of me…"

"I'm not asking you, I'm _telling_ you!" Light snapped. "I killed you because you were in my way; what makes you think I'd take you in to _live_ with me?"

"I am no longer a threat to you in the way I was before," L said dully. "I was a threat because I was L, the world's greatest detective. I was in a position powerful enough to utterly destroy you, had I the evidence to convict you; and that came from my reputation. Yet how can a _dead_ detective convict a criminal? I know you are Kira, Light-kun; you confessed it to me as I died in your arms. But I cannot use that information – you confessed only to me, and my testimony is worthless now."

"That doesn't _change_ anything!" Light blazed. "You're still my enemy!"

"That didn't matter to you before," L said softly. "It didn't stop you from—"

"It didn't stop _you_ either!" Light spat. "Maybe it's a mercy to you that I killed you when I did. If I'd been caught, if it had come out that you'd been sleeping with me… You'd have been a laughing stock! L, the greatest detective in the world, found to have been banging Kira every night,who also happened to have been a teenaged boy…? The media would have torn you to shreds."

"You justify your murder of me on those terms? How interesting."

"I don't have to justify anything to _you_," Light hissed. "You're the biggest hypocrite of them all. But it's true that your death protected you from—"

"No, you're wrong." L's interruption was cold and hard, effectively shutting Light up. "My death protected _you_, Light-kun. That's why you did it. I was the only one in your way, and in dying… I protected you."

"Then why have you come back?!" Light snapped. "Even if it wasn't an interest of yours to "protect" me, as you say… You can do nothing now. You said so yourself, that any information you have is worthless. What has hauled you from your grave to a time in which you're still dead?"

"Because of _you_, Light-kun," L replied dully.

"Oh, have you been sent back as a _guardian angel_?" Light mocked, his sneer deriding and teetering on the edge of something ugly. "I don't want you here haunting me. Go back to your grave, where you _belong_."

"You would ask me to die again?" L whispered, suddenly taking a step towards Light. "You would _dare_ to ask me to die again…?"

"I didn't _ask_ you the first time!" Light protested, backing away from him even so.

"Yes you did," L replied glazedly, beginning to force Light backwards across the bedroom, though he was still several feet away from him. "Neither of us realized at the time, but… Our relationship, that first kiss you gave me, the love you forced me to feel for you… It was always inevitable that I would discover that you were Kira, Light-kun, and so, even when you had no memory of your bloody secret, our shared love was your way of asking me to die, and to take my knowledge of that secret to my grave. By the time I had realized both this and your true identity as Kira, it was too late – I had already agreed to your terms, signed my _name_, if you will. Returning your love was my agreement to protect you from myself."

"You're saying you died on purpose?" Light spat.

"No, but… My 'Yes' to you voided any attempts to save myself. I confess I hadn't dreamed that you would be able to manipulate Rem-san in the way that you did, but the outcome was the same. I died knowing you were Kira, Light-kun – but no-one else did. I kept my end of the bargain, and _I_ paid for _your_ sins. That's why your demand for me to return to my grave, to die _again_ to protect you… is more selfish than I would have thought capable even of _you_, Light-kun."

"This is ridiculous!" Light blazed. "Your guilt trip isn't working on me! _Asking_ you to die…? You were in my way, so I got rid of you, end of story! And even if it _was_ true, the reason I'm telling you to go back to your grave is because you don't _belong_ here! You don't want to be here, and you don't know _why_ you're here—"

"And whose _fault_ is it that I don't belong here?" L interrupted icily; he'd backed Light up against the dresser by now, the younger man's back pressed to the mirror there.

"What else did you expect from _Kira_?" Light hissed.

L didn't seem to have an immediate answer for that, though he tilted his head and gazed hard at Light for a moment of mute study, before simply replying;

"You're a monster, Light-kun."

"_I'm_ a monster?" Light spat back, sounding near-hysterical. He grabbed L's wrist, guiding his thin hand to his beating heart and pressing his palm against it. "Do you feel that? _Do you feel that?!_ I may be a murderer, but I'm _not_ a monster! I'm alive, and I'm human, and… and what are _you_?! Are you even _alive_?"

"No, Light-kun. I'm not."

Light blinked, actually not expecting that answer. He'd been expecting some lengthy explanation about time loop-holes and alternate reality crossovers, or some other bizarre phenomenon straight out of those stupid sci-fi novels some of his old high school friends had been into.

And, at that answer, Light dropped L's wrist; though L's hand did not fall away, instead snatching a handful of Light's pajama top and tugging him forwards and off-balance. With a shocked little cry, Light found himself suddenly with his face pressed to L's chest, held there by the dead detective's cold, spidery hand.

And 'dead' was indeed the most apt way of describing him; not only could Light feel the iciness of his skin on both his skull and on his cheek, seeping through L's top, but there was a distinct silence in L's chest.

He could neither feel nor hear a heartbeat.

"What else did you expect from one of your victims, Kira?" L asked quietly, hearing Light swallow nervously.

Light twisted his head and looked up at him, straight into those obsidian orbs.

"What are y…?" Light trailed off, blinking once or twice, trying to understand what had changed. S_omething_ was different, something so critical, yet simultaneously negligible that he hadn't ever considered its loss. He straightened up, prying his head free from L's grip and instead grabbing L's face, pressing his own close to it so that he could look into his eyes.

"_What's wrong with your eyes…?_" The younger man whispered hoarsely; staring deeply and desperately into those black lakes, which, for once, refused to serve up his reflection.

He was so used to looking into these pools of ebony and being offered a flawless mirror that it unsettled him that suddenly there was nothing there at all, not even a glimmer from the sunshine.

"Your eyes… there's no reflection." Light shook him. "Why is there no reflection? Why can't I see myself in your eyes?!"

"Light-kun—"

"I could always see myself in your eyes," Light interrupted, not listening to him; his tone was tilted, near-hysterical. "It was always something you… I could always see myself perfectly, and sometimes I felt like you _knew_, like you could see Kira in me… Why can't I anymore, Ryuzaki? What's wrong with—?"

Light was cut off as L suddenly slammed him backwards, knocking him to the floor, where he landed heavily practically on his face.

"Isn't it enough that you killed me, Light-kun?" L hissed, standing over him. "Must you patronize me too? You know my name, so call me by it!"

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Light snapped, rolling over and propping himself up on his elbows. "What _are_ you? No heartbeat, and your eyes… Your eyes used to be like a mirror, what's the matter with—"

"You want a mirror, Light-kun?" L interrupted, tilting his head; and then he reached across to the dresser and took hold of the large three-panel folding makeup-mirror sitting on it.

"Ryuzaki, don't you _dare_—!" Light started without thinking.

He got no further, as L retaliated to the use of "Ryuzaki" and tossed the mirror onto the floor, where each panel shattered in a refracted spider web of cracks; Light shied away from the crash and shielded his face with his arm, still collapsed on the bedroom floor.

"Let me show you something, Light-kun." L crossed to him, bare feet stepping over a sea of broken glass without him so much as acknowledging it; he bent and plucked up a large sliver of it as he neared the younger man.

"Get… get away from me, you _creature_…!" Light spat, scrabbling backwards from him on seeing him take it into his hand.

"I only want to show you something." Despite Light's attempts to escape, L had effortlessly caught up to him, standing over him; and now, clutching his blade of broken mirror, sank downwards folding in sections, until he was straddling Light, like he had so often, all those years ago…

"Watch this." Holding out his hand for Light to see, L took the piece of broken glass and ran the sharp apex across his spread palm, splitting a deep dark line right across it.

There was no blood that followed in the wake of its birth, no color or movement; and, after a moment, the gash in his skin seeped, almost liquescent, backtogether again, as though it had never been present at all.

Light only stared at him, half-horrified and half-speechless.

"You're right," L said, taking a look at his hand himself. "I _am_ a… 'creature'. At the very least, I'm not human anymore. I have no heartbeat, no blood, no life in my eyes. You killed me, and so I shouldn't be here. I'm not what I once was, Light-kun. But _you_…"

L pressed the flat of the shattered shard of mirror to Light's cheek, watching him give a small shudder.

"…You haven't changed at all. You were always like this – always a _monster_. I was just blind to it before. I wanted to believe there was better in you, that there was beauty inside to match your exterior."

"A monster, am I?" Light hissed up at him. "You think I lack beauty within? Isn't it a thing of beauty to wish for a crime-free utopia where good, kind people can live in harmony?"

"It is impractical and impossible, and only your way of justifying an uncountable amassing of murder victims you believe you are judging and punishing. Your insistence of it being for the 'greater good' does not make it right. You wish for a mirror? Here." L held up the broken piece to Light's face. "Look. There is no god here, only a murderer. _My_ murderer."

Light looked at his reflection, seeing neither god nor murderer; only Light Yagami, handsomer still at the age of twenty-one. Even shattered, this mirror could not show him Kira.

Only L's eyes could do that.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall," L said dully, taking Light's hand and opening his palm; "…who is the fairest of them all…?"

And before Light could stop him or pull his hand away, L had dragged the edge of the broken piece over _his_ palm, opening a deep red ravine that elicited a cry of pain and crimson overflow from beneath the shredded skin.

"_Ah!_" Light snatched his hand back in horror, watching the blood well over and begin to slide down his wrist.

"You see…?" L examined his own reflection in the scarlet-stained mirror blade; before looking down at Light, who seemed positively terrified of him now. "…_You are not a god, Light Yagami_…"

Light averted his gaze from L's, focusing on his bleeding palm which was beginning to throb in time with his heartbeat; but then L took hold of his chin and forced his head upwards again.

"Indulge me, _Kira_," the dead detective hissed. "Say my name. I want to hear my real name spoken by that sweet voice of yours…"

"Y-your name…?"

"Yes. The thing you spent all those months trying to get from me; the one thing I never parted with, even to you. You needed a Shinigami to deal me my death – though it would be naïve of me to imagine that you don't know it by now. It _was_ written down, after all."

Light glared up at him; still with L straddling him, and still with his hand painted almost entirely crimson.

"Your name is L Lawliet," he said firmly.

L gave a sigh, letting go of Light's face; and then he dropped the piece of mirror and got off him, wandering away over to the bedroom window.

"It's been a long time since I've heard somebody say that," he said finally. "And how frustrating such a find must have been for you, Light-kun – all that struggle to find out my name, and you knew it the whole time. Half of it, anyway. I don't want you to call me 'Ryuzaki' anymore, regardless. It's not my name."

"You talk like you think I'm going to let you stay here," Light hissed; he gestured at the mirror. "After that, _L_?"

"I will be staying, Light-kun," L replied flatly. "It is a decision made by neither of us. I was sent back here because you were. If you think I _wanted_ to come back, you are wrong."

"You're unbelievable," Light snapped. "You hate me so much that you'd rather be _dead _than spend another moment with me? You might have been brought back as a walking corpse, or _whatever_ you are, but surely it's better than nothing? All that endless white, or knowing nothing at all—"

"You are ignorant, Light-kun," L interrupted softly, looking out over Tokyo with a cold hand pressed to the glass. "But that is to be expected. In death, you were not sent where I was."

"And where were _you_ sent that was so special you didn't want to come back?" Light barbed.

Still not sparing him a glance, L's voice was lifeless as he answered;

"Heaven."

* * *

—_Down in Hollywood, on the boulevard,_

_The dead come back to life._

_The River;_ Good Charlotte feat. Avenged Sevenfold

* * *

Narroch made an interesting point in an email to me on reading this; her first response was "Yay! L's back!", and then she realized that…

…he was never really absent for any chapters. O.o The only chapter he wasn't in very much was _Ars Moriendi_, which focused solely on Light, but he _was_ in it, a least a little.

_So_… the gears are back in motion, places have been taken up again, the overture's begun – and it ain't called the _Danse Macabre_ for nothing.

An added perk this time around comes in three forms; namely Mello, Near and Matt.

You guys probably have a ton of questions – feel free to voice them in reviews, though hopefully most, if not all, will be answered in the story at a later point.

There was one question, however, that was brought up in quite a few reviews for _Ars Moriendi_ and _Once Upon a Dream_, given that both of those acts were only one chapter each:

How long is _Danse Macabre_ going to be?

Truthfully, I can't answer that. _Danse Macabre_ is not finished, so I really don't know. _Fairietayle_ was planned specifically at ten chapters – _Danse Macabre_ will definitely, for certain, be no shorter than _Fairietayle_. It will probably be longer, but… I'm not sure.

But hellz no, it isn't only one chapter! No worries on that front!

In other news, I replaced the poll in my profile. The LxLight/LightxL one is still open, but is no longer my predominant poll. You guys should go check out my new one – it's also _Death Note_-related, and it's an issue that bugs me a whole lot more than the seme/uke debate.

Guys, thanks for voting on the old poll! A huge 209 voters brought the battle very close a number of times, but I can say this: L is, and always has been, winning for seme position. Light, you fail. Go stand in the corner.

Everyone, thanks for reading, reviewing and keeping up with _Poison Apple_! We'll try to keep the updates constant, though they probably won't be as frequent as the _Fairietayle_ ones were, I'm afraid. That said, chapter two (or fourteen) is already under construction, so here's hoping. :)

See you all next time! Yay! It's good to be back in action…

- RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx


	14. Gingerbread

**RobinRocks: **Okay, well, today – Monday 28th January, 2008 – is Narroch's 20th birthday! She is exactly a month before our dear Light Yagami!

**Narroch:** Yay! Two whole decades of being alive! Though honestly, I would rather be a teenager still. Cause this means I am one year closer to facing the Real World. Oh teh noes! I don't think I could get a legitimate job being a fanfiction author. O.o It would be sweet if I could though. Meh…

**RobinRocks:** I think a lot of FFNet members would be plenty richer if you could… Anyway, we seem to be off to a good start with _Danse Macabre_! The first chapter was received well with plenty of interesting questions! Thankyou so very much, guys! Glad you're liking it as much as ever and aren't put off by the sudden one-eighty the fic has pulled…

Thankyou to:** Lawliet's Angel,** **Mask of Mirage, Mayura-Hikari-090, DaRk MiKo 18, Kaiji, Itallia, catchmeloon, Tanka, Li the Twilight Knight, Mihael-kun, ElegantArrow 64, kitsunechibiko, DoYouFindMeDreadful,** **tsuki aoi usagi, Stina the Wicked, Kiki-sama, hittocerebattosai, Zaika-Purr, AutumnDynasty, Wammy's House, NaroRau, Phoenix of Hell, Sister Salsa, Sophabelle, Shamuthebat, Anja-chan, Oreoz69, Snuffleswillrise, BakayaroManiac, momijikk, Heck, Kiyoiyuki, Silent Dagger, Dark Dragon 34, LetThereBeRaito, The Devils Concubine, Yuki, Leki, AiriaBlack, Stargirl7, blueeyedchibi, SongCoriel, Jenna, Lorea-Cerise, Teldra, Little Alexander Uzumaki, fouloldron, Blacknoise, FoamyxTobi, Akasuna Scorpion, narni4eva, brittany745 **and **mornir-brightflame. **

**Narroch:** A huge thankyou to all who have reviewed for the first time on the last chapter! We love seeing new faces! But an even BIGGER thankyou to those who have been with us from the very beginning! We love you all! Have some birthday cake! Mwah!

* * *

_The magic of that name is fled; The music of that dream is dead; Long since Love's rose, its perfume, shed—_

_If you have come to clasp again—the fetter of that fairy chain; you'd better far at home remain—_

_And yet that dream was strangely dear; And yet that name awakes a tear; the __**wraith**__ of Love's sweet Rose is here—!_

_I wish the chain were still unbroken; I wish those words again were spoken; I wish I'd kept that last fond token—_

_I wish your voice still sounded sweet; I wish you dared Love's vow repeat; I wish you were not all deceit—_

_I wish we might go back again; I wish you __**could**__ reclasp the chain; I wish—you free of Earthly pain—_

- Francis Sargent Locke Osgood, _The Wraith of the Rose_; (1850)

* * *

Gingerbread

The task was nothing but an idle distraction, really; it was a Monday, but he'd skipped his university lectures (though technically he had already attended the same lectures two years ago, or ninety eight years ago, depending on how he tilted his logic), and he was far too shaken to go into the Kira taskforce office and hold face as "L".

Not when the real thing had shown up in his apartment only this morning.

Instead he'd busied himself all morning and well into the afternoon carefully collecting every last tiny sliver of broken mirror, wrapping them in sheets of newspaper and then spreading the whole shattered mess out on the kitchen table and slowly piecing it all back together in each panel. The broken pieces reflected an inverted patchwork of sunlight shards across the far wall of the kitchen, giving the entire room a warm glittering aura; and yet it wasn't enough to dispel the chills that frequently scuttled through Light's body as he worked on his self-elected project.

His father had sounded worried over the phone when Light had called to say he wouldn't be coming in, that he wasn't feeling himself; asked if he wanted him to send Matsuda round with anything, a suggestion which Light had quickly turned down, not least to spare poor Matsuda from being nominated Errand Boy again.

L had been standing motionless in the darkened hallway as he'd spoken with his father, his spectral presence serving as a visual reminder for exactly _why_ Light couldn't have Matsuda barging in here with a paper bag of groceries.

Light didn't eat; only sat with the coffee pot next to him, refilling his cup every so often, as he painstakingly put the mirror back together. It was tricky, like doing a jigsaw, but boring – mind-numbingly so.

But anything – _anything_ – to keep his mind off the mess that he couldn't seem to wade through; all the questions that floated around his head like carrion birds, persistent and clinging to the smell of death… Why was L here? How was he back from the dead? How was _Light_ back from the dead? Had he even died at all? Why the time loop? Where was Misa…?

His palm stung, split open by the piece of ragged mirror L had dragged across his skin. He'd cleaned it, put a plaster on it, had a feeling it probably needed stitches; though maybe his hand wasn't the _only_ thing that did…

He was aware of L watching him. Knew that L's charcoal gaze smoldered over his turned back from his post in the doorway, just beyond the threshold, as though a vampire that couldn't come in unless invited – though Light knew that wasn't the case, L could sure as hell come in wherever he pleased, he'd proved that already, since Light _certainly_ hadn't fucking invited him into his apartment.

Nor back into his life.

Regardless, L seemed _different_. Maybe all those years in the grave had changed him. He certainly knew more about death than Light did. There was an air of new knowledge about him; though it was not the arrogant World's-Best-Detective type of intelligence he used to display, filled with deductions and percentages. It was a more haunted understanding, like that of a veteran who has seen too much of the world and resigned to the harsh facts experience has beaten into him over the years. It gave his vapid gaze a quiet affirmation that _yes, _L knew things that Light didn't. He didn't like that look on L's face, and its intensity now bothered him.

But more apparent than the niggling suspicions L's eyes held were the physical aberrations he displayed. He wasn't talking, which was strange enough in itself; he'd neglected his favored sitting position for standing; and he wasn't _eating_.

Honestly, Light had expected him to have rummaged through the fridge at least once by now – or, at the _very_ least, demanded a cup of tea or coffee.

But he hadn't. He hadn't even indicated that he would like one – and when Light had flatly offered, more to make him talk than anything else, L had refused. He seemed content to just stand there like an inverted shadow, watching Light tediously piece the broken mirror back together – as though, to him, it gave him the same pleasure as watching Light try to piece together an understanding of this whole twisted situation.

The life that was his, one that he'd already lived, yet seemed to have changed without his knowledge; to piece back together his scrabbled memories, those that refused to fit back together correctly when he tried to rearrange them to accommodate for the things that, at present, he found he couldn't recall…

He had been victim to memory shifts before, but it had not bothered him because he had not been aware of the loss. This time however, the more he thought about the past, what was now his present, the more he realized that things were not as they should be, that something was different, and that meant something was terribly _wrong _and yet he couldn't figure out _what _it was, and the more he thought about it, the _worse _it got...

Light forced his hand to be steady despite how unsettled he felt, twicefold by this state of affairs and L's presence directly behind him; his fingers slipped only once as he picked up a long piece of mirror, the shape of which he recognized.

He recognized it because it had drawn blood from his hand; because it had been pressed to his cheek; because L had asked him to see God in it.

It was still a little stained with the faintest smears of his own blood, though he'd wiped it off on the newspaper. He looked away from the rust-colored stain with a repressed shudder as he lifted it with shaking fingers to put it into place—

"That piece doesn't go there, Light-kun."

L's cold emotionless voice cutting mercilessly through the silence startled him, making his heart jolt (_his heart that beat_) and his grip on the piece be lost, sending it spinning to the kitchen floor, where on impact, it broke in half with an apologetic _clink_.

He looked up and across the kitchen furiously, his dark umber eyes smoldering with a detached rage. L met his burning gaze with those blank, black eyes, then shrugged.

"You were trying to fit it with a piece that didn't match," he said softly. He paused, tilting his head, then added; "I want some tea."

"Get it yourself," Light snapped, leaning over to snatch up the two pieces of the original singular piece from the floor.

"No." L finally stepped over the threshold of the kitchen door, approaching him from behind. "I want you to make it for me."

Unsettled by L coming closer to him, Light put down the pieces of mirror and slid out from his seat – backing down far more easily to the detective than he would have done were he still alive, though it wasn't just the knowledge that he was dead that made Light afraid of him.

L was different. Very, _very_ different, though his appearance – but for his eyes – belied it.

"I offered you some tea before," he hissed, not looking at L as he crossed the kitchen to put the counter between them.

"I didn't want it then." L sat down at the table, neglecting his favored position to sit normally.

"_Do you think you're going to replace Watari with me?_" Light hissed, pouring boiling water into a teacup despite his protests.

"Light," was all L said in reply to that, dropping the honorary; an unmistakable demand for his attention.

Light looked over his shoulder at the dead detective; barely able to suppress a furious cry as he saw him systematically rearranging pieces of mirror that he'd already slid back together but had yet to glue down.

"_What?_" He asked through gritted teeth, unable to yell at L like he used to, despite the detective's obvious instigating actions.

L looked up at him, pausing in his mayhem on Light's shattered mirror.

"Do not mention Watari again," he said flatly. "Ever. I will not hear his name spoken by your lying mouth."

Light swallowed, though he hadn't an answer; not just because L scared him. It was because L was right – Light couldn't deny lying. Denying it would be lying in itself.

"Did you hear me?" L asked, his tone still devoid of emotion, as Light came back to the table with the cup of tea he'd made for him.

"Yeah," Light bit out, going back to his own seat. "I heard you." He leaned over the mirror and began to shift all the pieces that L had deliberately rearranged back into place.

L gave a nod, glancing at the cup of tea, but not touching it.

"You'd better drink that," Light growled, glancing up at him through the fringe of his hair.

"What will you do if I don't, I wonder?" L answered, looking up at the ceiling.

Light gave a sigh and went back to the mirror.

"Why aren't you sitting in your normal way?" He asked, not really caring for the answer – the facade of normal conversation was more to ease the awkward silence, more to distract himself from the raw implications of L's presence. He didn't like L being there, he didn't _want_ L there, he wanted L to go away, to go away forever and never come back, the way he had _thought_ he had…

"Sitting in such a way aided my reasoning ability. I constantly sat in that way around you, Light-kun, because I was constantly considering the percentage of your likeliness of being Kira. Needless to say, I _know_ you are Kira now. I don't need to reason anything about you anymore."

"You think you know everything about me…?" Light muttered blackly, glancing up at him again. He absolutely hated the note of dismissal present in L's voice, made worse by the fact that it was not in any way taunting or judgmental, only spoken as an undeniable truth.

L gave a small, noncommittal shrug.

"What is there to know? You're nothing but an arrogant, selfish brat who thinks he's a god; a child with a dangerous toy."

"Well, at least I didn't _lose_ to an arrogant, selfish brat who thinks he's a god!" Light snapped, looking up at him; hoping to get his own blade in, even if just a little.

"But you _did_ lose," L said, with soft, chilling certainty.

And then he smiled.

Light's honey-brown eyes narrowed venomously.

"Near," he threw out, hoping to unsettle L.

That he knew in advance of the one – the successor of L – who would be the one to strike him down was an incontestable advantage. Though at the moment, his memories were still jarring, and he could not recall what Near _looked_ like – couldn't command his face into his mind, the specific information balking in the memory of the warehouse that was still drenched in pain and blood whenever he thought about it – but he still had the upper hand here in this timeline, knew of Near before Near could know anything of him…

Incidentally, L didn't seem overtly bothered by Light's utterance of the codename of his successor; maybe death had made him more detached than he even appeared. He merely gave another shrug and lifted his teacup to his lips, watching Light over it – the younger man distorted by the steam rising from it.

Light looked away from him, picking up the glue to stick down the pieces he'd put back into place before L could mess them up again.

"You remind me of the Snow Queen, Light-kun," L said across the table, putting his cup down again.

"Do I?" Light asked wearily, not glancing upwards, simultaneously accustomed to, and bewildered by, L's random topic choice.

"Yes. Do you know the story?"

"I vaguely recall it."

_Snow White. Sleeping Beauty. Beauty and the Beast. The Snow Queen. Are you back to start all of this again; back to haunt my dreams and my every waking moment? Back to bury yourself inside me, to leave me in ruins? Dead, alive, it doesn't seem to matter with you. Why can't you just go, L – why can't you just leave me the fuck __**alone**_

"The Snow Queen had a mirror," L said tonelessly. "To be blunt, it was smashed into thousands of pieces, and she was obsessed with putting it back together, painstakingly restoring it. The final piece was in the eye of a human boy, distorting his view so that he could see only the ugliness of the world."

"Is that right." It wasn't a question on Light's part.

He knew what L was getting at; comparing him not only to the queen, but to the boy – the boy who could see nothing but ugliness, the rottenness of the world, corrupted into being so by something that his beauty helplessly fell prey to.

"It is." L looked at the ceiling a second time. "Aren't fairytales fascinating? Sleeping princesses, enchanted princes, dark forests, poison apples… They're nonsense, really; nonsense that people cling to."

He looked back at Light, watching him slip two pieces of mirror back together in the frame.

"Do you have a favorite, Light-kun?" L's voice sounded unnervingly normal by this point; his usual, alive sort of lifelessness, rather than the new, haunted variation that tinted his voice.

Light shrugged, still not looking at the dead detective.

"_Snow White_, maybe," he muttered.

"Indeed." L tilted his head. "I wonder… do gods of death like apples as much as Snow White did…?"

Light shrugged silently, suspicious of what exactly L was trying to get at by bringing up the reference.

"What's your favorite, L?" He asked, again caring little for the answer, instead just trying to maintain some sort of control over the conversation. He didn't want to be the only one being interrogated.

"It doesn't have a name." _That_ made Light look up, warily intrigued. "It's a popular one, though; and interesting, since a lot of people believe that it's actually true. You might know it."

"How does it go?" Light asked absently, going back to his task.

"Something like 'Once upon a time, there was a prince'," L started quietly, "'who was blessed with the gifts of great beauty and intellect; and he believed to have been given another gift, though he was wrong in believing so, since it was, in fact, a curse. He couldn't understand that the ability to take lives could only be an evil power, and so, believing himself to have been granted a devout potency, he declared himself a god. Eventually his heart was turned completely to darkness, so that he killed any and all who stood in his path, even the one who had loved him. In destroying those whom he deemed wicked, the prince corrupted the hearts of those whom he deemed good, encouraging them to rejoice in death and poisoning the kingdom he was to rule. Eventually, however, a knight arose to stand in his way, and the prince was defeated. Needless to say, he didn't live happily ever after, but that was alright, because he didn't have anyone to live happily ever after _with_'."

L took another sip of his tea as he finished speaking; observing Light, who was staring steadfastly at him again, utterly speechless, as the hostility between them became a tangible force and darkened the room considerably.

"Do you know it?" L asked nonchalantly over his tea, quietly breaking through the tension.

"_You bastard_," Light hissed, clenching his fists. "Belittling all my sacrifices—"

"And was I one of _your_ 'sacrifices', Light-kun?" L interrupted coldly; he gave an equally icy little laugh. "You don't know the _meaning_ of the word. Taking lives that were not yours to take… that is _not_ sacrifice. Down to the lowest of the low, the worst rapist or murderer whose life you wiped off by scribbling down a few kanji… For all your claims of doing to it to create a better world, if that life was not yours, then it wasn't a sacrifice. It wasn't justice. It was just _murder_."

"_Someone_ had to do it!" Light cried. "Someone still _does_! This world is rotten, you know it as well as I do, even if you refuse to admit it just to spite me and my ideals!" He took a deep, shuddering breath to calm himself down. "Haven't you ever studied any of the Bible? The Old Testament? Noah's Ark, where God drowned the wicked to purge the world of evil? Isn't that exactly what _I_ am doing?"

"More fairy stories, Light-kun?" L said lazily, still able to pull off the perfect balance of derision and dismissal that had vexed Light to no end when L had been alive.

Light scowled at L, suddenly viciously aware that now they could openly argue about Kira and his methods without relying on hypothetical situations, or "_If _I was Kira..." statements. Light's ideals were suddenly naked to L's perusal, unable to hide behind the mask of innocent ignorance; such dissection of his core values made him cagey, antagonistic, and – above all – _angry_.

"Don't you think that's a bit insulting to those of the Christian religion, L?" He spat.

"Don't you think it's more insulting to those of the Christian religion that you would use the tales of their holy book to justify your murder spree?" L replied coolly by way of a question of his own. "Let's not go into it, Light-kun. Let's not talk about things that you cannot possibly understand – things you have been denied understanding of."

Light glared at him in seething silence for a moment or two, debating whether or not to chase the argument, before once again averting his attention back to his shattered mirror; clattering pieces together violently as he struggled to make them fit and reflect the world as it _should_ be, instead of a cracked, distorted lie.

"I used to be reminded of another fairytale," L said softly, not seeming to care that Light was steadfastly attempting to ignore him, drown him out with the sharp clicking of glass. "A long time ago, when I first met you."

"Was it about a boy who got into Tokyo University with perfect scores in every one of the entrance exams?" Light bit out.

"No. That sounds like a rather boring fairytale." L sipped at his tea again. "Do you know _Hansel and Gretel_?"

Light rolled his eyes.

"_Everyone_ knows that story…"

"Do _you_?"

"_Yes_." Light shot him a disgusted look. "Breadcrumbs, gingerbread house, wicked witch… I know it. What's your point?"

"I used to wonder to myself," L said emotionlessly, "whether, on veering away from the correct path, you had left a trail of 'breadcrumbs' for yourself to follow, so that you could escape your fate of being devoured utterly by evil." L tilted his head as he glanced again at Light. "I suppose you didn't."

"_Where_ do you get this garbage from?!" Light snapped.

L shrugged yet again, the evasive gesture becoming an irritant to Light.

"I only wondered if you would be _able_ to escape. Given that you clearly weren't able to, maybe it's unfair of me to _blame_ you for your actions. Maybe you couldn't _help_ but become evil."

"I am not _evil_!" Light blazed, banging his palm on the table and making the pieces of broken mirror rattle on its surface, and the speckled reflections shiver on the far wall.

L gave a sick little smirk, enjoying Light's sudden lack of control.

"Forgive me, Light-kun, but such a denial sounds ironic to the ears of someone you murdered…"

Light exhaled roughly, his mouth suddenly feeling very sour and dry. He snatched up his now-cool coffee and drank deeply from it, watching L icily the entire time, intending to take his retort and shove it right back down his pale throat…

Until he felt something solid slip past his lips and catch and stick at the back of his _own_ throat.

He immediately started to cough violently, feeling… _whatever_ it was cut sharply into the roof of his mouth as his fierce hacking began to loosen it, a bite of copper salt surging forth as it brought blood. He was aware of L simply watching him, his head a little to one side, as he jumped up from his chair in a panic, feeling it on the cusp of his control, on the very brink of being swallowed and slitting down his convulsing throat in a torrent of blood – he collapsed onto the floor, landing on his elbows and knees as if he was sick and trying to vomit, but nothing came from his gaping mouth but a deluge of pink tinged saliva, marbled with blood, until finally—

He coughed it loose, hearing it _clink_ on the kitchen tiles; and finally opened his eyes, panting heavily, to see exactly what it was that had made its way into his coffee and almost choked him—

A piece of mirror; now covered in blood, tinting the reflected world crimson.

Light knelt up, his breath shuddering and his eyes wide as he tasted the blood still welling up from the back of his throat; felt it oozing down into his stomach. L, it had to have been him, he must have slipped it into his coffee when he had forced Light to get up and make him a cup of tea, why the hell had he come back from the grave as such a freaking _psycho_…?

"Are you alright, Light-kun?"

Light found his view obscured by the L's lower legs as he stepped in front of him; and then the dead detective crouched before him, settling into the position that Light recognized. He was still daintily holding his own teacup.

"_You_…" Light breathed, his throat and mouth aching from the ordeal. "You… put that… _that_… into my coffee…!"

L gave a slow nod, as though communicating with a child.

"You… you could have _killed_ me!" Light blazed, leaning right towards him, ready to strangle him – had he any breath to be crushed from his lungs…

"I wouldn't have let you choke to death."

Light didn't believe him, and L's blatant guiltless affirmation sent his own anger flying backwards into his face and he was suddenly thoroughly terrified by the way L seemed to accept his own twisted actions as completely normal and permissible.

It was as if he were completely detached; inhuman.

_But he __**isn't **__human anymore, is he…?_

Light shifted his weight, feeling threatened and trapped, but his back only met with the legs of his chair when he tried to ease himself away.

"Let me answer an earlier question," L said faintly, swilling his tea around the cup; and then he reached into the liquid and plucked, with his usual two fingers, another piece of shattered mirror. He held it up for Light to see, shaking the tea off it.

His breathing shallow, Light couldn't help but be reminded of that time, all those years ago, when he'd held L asleep in his arms after they'd made love, and half-dreamt of forcing him, via the Death Note, to break a mirror into tiny shards, slip them into his tea, and then drink it down, killing himself in a most beautiful, poetic manner…

"You asked why I was here," L went on; he licked the sliver of mirror and then placed it down on the kitchen floor, setting it flush against the piece Light had coughed up, revealing that they were in fact two halves of the same shard.

The shard that had drawn blood from Light's hand; been pressed to his pretty face; that he had failed to see God in.

Light looked up at L, breathless with terror; looking into those glazed black eyes, those without a reflection…

"We're chained together," L said softly. "That's why I'm here."

He handed a stunned Light his still nearly-full teacup, got up and walked away, closing the kitchen door behind him.

Light dropped the cup almost immediately, leaning back against his chair and placing his head in his hands.

L's whispered words of a chain, his inerrant knowledge of things Light knew had been kept confined to his mind and his mind alone… No matter his looks, his voice, his mannerisms, what Light had before him now wasn't the L he had learned to feel love for in tandem with his hatred; wasn't the L he had held and been held by late at night…

What he had now was – surely – a manifestation of L's hatred for him; a form of L's resentment at losing to Kira.

Nothing but a puppet mastered by his thirst for revenge, or by the blood of his betrayal at the hands of the only person he'd ever loved and been loved by. He was dancing a controlled ballet, grabbing at Light and trying to force him to dance it with him, so that he could drag him to _Hell_, was _that_ what that Heaven-spent _husk_ thought he was trying to do…?

Or was he simply back to try a second time for a happily ever after (insisting that, since he and Light were chained together, then they should share the same fate)?

_Nobody wrote you a happy ending the first time, my dark-eyed beauty; and now that you're dead and forgotten, I don't see anyone writing you one a second time around either. I know that…_

…_And I think you do too. _

* * *

_'I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions._

_Whatever I see I swallow immediately_

_Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. _

_I am not cruel, only truthful—_

_The eye of a little god, four-cornered.' _

- Sylvia Plath, _Mirror _(1961)

* * *

There were pieces missing.

By eight in the evening, Light had glued every shard of mirror he had picked up back into the frame, painstakingly lining up every ragged edge that he could. It hadn't been easy, required someone of a sharp mind and even sharper eye to be able to put it back together like this – but regardless, in places scattered across each of the three panels, there were slivers missing, pieces that he'd searched for high and low on the bedroom floor and the kitchen floor too. But then again, he knew the vast circumference over which shattered glass seemed to have the capability to fling itself…

He ran his fingers over the middle panel, feeling the edges of the spiderweb of cracks catch on the skin of his fingertips; and then they dipped into one of the black triangular holes left by a missing piece.

He almost wished he hadn't gone to the trouble of putting it – for the most part – back together. His reflection in it was distorted and unlinear, duplicated in places into smaller versions of himself…

And it still didn't show him Kira.

Light felt his stomach lurch and growl, suddenly realizing how hungry he was – such that he was almost weak with it, given that he had neglected to eat all day. It was almost as though, until now, he had forgotten _how_ to be hungry…

He went through the fridge, finding it to be mostly sparse, and gave a sigh, knowing that this meant he was going to have to go out and get something. It wouldn't have been a problem, since he usually did the shopping – Misa wasn't a very good cook, leaving it to Light, which meant it was better for him to get groceries himself.

Besides, there was also that whole famous-pop-idol "Oh-my-gawd-it's-Misa-Misa!" thing…

Still, what a bother; he was exhausted and shaken, not looking forward to forcing food down his throat – which still ached from L's malicious stunt – wanting nothing more than to just go back to the bedroom and crawl under the covers of his bed and go to sleep; and hopefully when he woke up again, L would be gone…

Not that he'd _seen_ L since he'd walked out of the kitchen. He was keeping fairly out of his way – apparently only showing up now and then to impress his malevolent presence on Light by way of broken mirrors and cruel, ironic words…

No, maybe it would be good to get out for a while, to get away from him…

Light went to get his jacket and wallet from the bedroom, pausing with bated breath before pushing the door open, hoping that L wasn't in there – not simply because, if he _was_, no doubt he'd be wreaking more mayhem on Light's personal belongings, but simply because Light couldn't bear to be in the same room as him, gazed upon judiciously by those wicked dark eyes…

The bedroom was empty, however, and Light was quick to snatch up what he had come in for before leaving. He darted back through the apartment, not caring where L was, and slammed the front door behind him, taking the steps of the apartment block two at a time.

The cold air outside – choked, inner-Tokyo air – felt good as he breathed it in on opening the doors out into the street; it was liberation, freedom from that apartment that now, with L disjointedly haunting its every room, threatened to become his cage, or…

…The _prison_ L had always threatened to see him confined in.

* * *

"Hey, you."

Light looked up on making his way back up the steps towards his apartment, clutching bags and boxes; a man – somewhere in his thirties, dressed in pressed slacks and a half-unbuttoned shirt – who Light recognized only to look at, living in the apartment below his, was standing on the steps halfway between his own apartment and Light's.

"You're the boy from upstairs, right?"

Light gave a nod; feeling his stomach sink in dreaded anticipation. What had L done _now_…?

This man owned a kitten – Light knew that because it often climbed up the drainpipe outside onto _his_ windowsill. Sometimes he'd come in from university or the Kira office and find the little calico in the middle of _their_ kitchen floor, lapping from a saucer of milk Misa had provided it with, while the young model crouched over it and cooed, scratching its tiny pointed ears.

He hoped to all hell that L hadn't…

He didn't know quite how sick and sadistic this new L was – would he hurt a kitten? The old one wouldn't have; he wouldn't have looked twice at a kitten, as a matter of fact. Or, if he had, he'd probably have done what Misa used to do – give it a dish of milk. He wouldn't have ever _hurt_ it.

But Light just didn't know about the new one.

"What's wrong?" Light asked, forcing his voice to sound normal; hoping the reply wasn't going to be "Your freak of a housemate – the one that looks like he just crawled back out of his grave – hung my cat from the upstairs window with a washing line", or something to that description.

"I heard something smash in your apartment while you were out," the man said. "Don't know what it was. Thought I should let you know."

"Oh," Light said faintly. "Okay, thanks…"

He gave the man a nod and passed him, going up towards his own door.

"There you are, Ryuga," he heard the man say behind him.

Light paused on the landing, shuddering to a stop at the mention of that familiar name; peering over his shoulder to see the man bend down to scoop up the kitten, which had appeared from nowhere and was mewling at his feet.

_Ryuga…?_

Seeming to know that Light was looking at him, the man glanced up the stairs, holding the kitten to his chest. He gave a small laugh at what he assumed was a questioning stare from Light.

"My niece named him," he explained. "You know, after that pop star. Ryuga Hideki, or whatever his name was…"

"Oh." Light gave a nod.

Ryuga Hideki. Of course. After all…

…that was where _L_ had gotten the name from too.

Light walked away without another word and quickly reached his own apartment. He quietly stepped inside, closing the door by leaning up against it, closing his eyes and mentally preparing himself to face the ghost still haunting him. He decided he didn't care if L had smashed that mirror all over again – he was much too exhausted to be angry, much too weakened by hunger and fatigue to be wounded by L's overwhelming spite.

However, when he got to the kitchen, he found that the mirror he'd spent an entire day delicately piecing back together was still in place, propped up on the sideboard.

Maybe the man downstairs had heard wrong? Maybe it had been from the apartment next to him?

Too weary to attempt cooking, Light had bought Chinese food instead, hot in paper cartons and boxes; he set them on the table, put the rest of the groceries away and went to find L.

He understood that the man downstairs _hadn't_ been wrong when he walked into the bathroom; finding L sitting in the bath, fully clothed with water up to his waist, staring absently ahead of him and slowly rhythmically moving his hands through the liquid. Light quickly realized he was scooping up more than just water, since resting at the bottom of the tub was the metallic glint of hundreds of mirror shards, glimmering like silver yen thrown into the wishing wells in Downtown Tokyo.

There was also a carpet of broken mirror across the bathroom floor; and when Light looked at the wall, he saw that the mirror in which he had observed his own reflection only that morning was smashed out, only a few tenacious triangles left clinging to the edge of the frame.

L tilted his head, glancing at him.

"Hello, Light-kun," he said dully.

"Why do you keep breaking all my mirrors?" Light asked him quietly, utterly devoid of the anger he should be feeling – instead a yawning wariness kept him tacked to the edge of the threshold; he went no nearer to the dead detective, thinking it best to keep his distance while he was so unpredictable.

L seemed to consider the question for a moment or two, fishing in the bottom of the bath for a decent-sized shard and holding it up between his finger and thumb.

"I don't like them," he decided finally, flicking the piece to the bathroom floor, where it landed near Light's feet.

"You used to have them everywhere."

_Even in your eyes, my love…_

"I know, but… they betrayed me, don't you think…?"

"What do you mean?" Light asked cautiously.

"They were there to stop you from stabbing me in the back," L said tonelessly. "There at every angle, so that I could see every side of you." L gave a sigh, grasping up a handful of pieces and letting them slide carelessly through his fingers back into the water with a series of small splashes. "It didn't work. I was still blind to you. You still killed me."

He touched his own cheek with wet fingers; then withdrew to look critically at his pale, thin hands.

"_Maybe it's this as well,_" he whispered, more to himself as he hunched over his spread palms. "_When I look and see… this body_…"

Light frowned at the tremor in L's voice.

"You look like L to me," he said.

L glanced curiously at him.

"And do you think that's what I want to see?"

Light had no answer for that – after all, what did L _expect_ to see…?

"I got some food," was all he said finally, unable to come up with an explanation, or a question in order to _get _an explanation for L's strange behavior.

L gave a slow nod and stood up, stepping out of the shallow bath. He crossed the bathroom and passed Light, revealing that the bath water was actually icy cold, when a few stray droplets landed on Light's skin, raising a patchwork of goosebumps. Light shivered at both the freezing sensation and also the very _idea _of taking an ice bath in November. L sloshed out the door, dragging a trail of frigid water after him, most of his jeans utterly drenched. Light followed him out of the bathroom, closing the door to the mess L had made of it.

"You'll have to change," Light said after him as he began to trail away down the corridor. "You're soaked."

L didn't pause, nor even look at him.

"No thankyou, Light-kun. I would prefer to stay like this."

Light stared after him, stunned into silence for a moment or two by his refusal; and then, temper _finally_ spiking, started after him, grabbing a handful of the sodden hem of his white shirt.

"I don't want you dripping water all over my apartment!" He snapped.

L looked back at him, his gaze unreadable as always.

"You don't want me in your apartment at all, Light-kun," he replied softly.

Light didn't respond to that, instead grasping L by his shoulders and forcefully turning him around to face him.

"Look, I'll lend you something until it dries out—" he started, grasping at L's top and starting to pull it upwards.

"_Don't touch me!_" L screeched suddenly, shoving him off and backwards; something demented flashing in those dark mirrorless eyes. He backed away, pulling his shirt down.

Light stared at him, breathing deeply, shocked at his sudden outburst. He rubbed his ribs where L's bony hands had slammed into them, then gave a distressed little nod and walked past him to the kitchen.

He didn't care whether L had followed him as he got out two plates and two sets of chopsticks, setting them down on the table; though acknowledging that he had indeed accompanied him as he quickly started to make some tea. Just going through the motions of the mundane to ease how painful it was to have L here – how painful it was for him to be this… _thing_… Not the L he remembered, as annoying as he had been… He hadn't been this vindictive, horrible, unpredictable creature, he'd just been L – dangerous in his own way, but tamable…

He hadn't smashed mirrors or sat in cold baths or screamed at Light not to touch him or filled him with such terrible, uneasy dread just by _looking_ at him, as if radiating some horrible forbidden secret that would destroy Light if he managed to figure it out…

He noticed L wander over by the fixed mirror and banged down the teapot.

"Get away from that," he hissed when L looked up at him innocently. L smirked back at him, though the look seemed forced on his pale face, and went to the kitchen table to sit down; again neglecting the position Light had come to categorize him by.

"Here." Light gave him a teacup, then opened up the Chinese cartons and started piling food onto his plate; chow mein noodles and chicken fried rice and sweet and sour pork and stir fried vegetables. He threw the chopsticks at him when he was done and stalked back to his own seat across the table. "Eat it."

L didn't even blink; watching Light gather his own helpings from each of the cartons and begin to eat.

Preoccupied with attempting to swallow in a way that didn't rub against the cut in his mouth, it took Light quite a while to notice that L hadn't moved at all; he was just staring at the meal in front of him, his head off a little to one side.

"Hey, my house, my rules," Light snapped across the table. "You're not living off sugary garbage in here."

L blinked up at him; then reached over and picked up a solitary chopstick in his usual way, dangling it over his plate before dropping it rather pathetically.

"Okay," Light sighed deeply, putting his own chopsticks aside and getting up. "I forgot…"

He went to the drawer and rummaged around, coming back to the table with a fork. He snatched the chopsticks away and pressed the utensil into L's cold hand.

"Now _eat_, for god's sake," he muttered, going back to his seat.

L didn't, though. Light pointedly ignored him, but he'd almost cleared his plate when he glanced up again and found that L was still sitting in exactly the same position, fork suspended daintily above his plate, with not so much as a dent made in the now-cool Chinese food.

"Why aren't you eating?" Light asked icily, sipping at his tea.

L gave a silent shrug, taking the question as a signal to finally put the fork down.

Light averted his gaze and finished his own meal, silently seething; he knew L preferred sweet things, but Light _refused_ to feed him solely on cake. Just who the hell did he think he _was_…?

"Are you going to eat it?" He asked coldly, on getting up to clear the table after he'd finished eating; he felt like he was talking to a stubborn little kid who wouldn't eat their vegetables.

"No," L said simply.

Light took the plate away with an angry sigh.

"Starve, then," he snapped.

He scraped the untouched food into the bin, then resealed the boxes with leftover stuff in them and put them into the fridge. He was about the kick the fridge door closed when it caught his eye – something he'd bought for a reason he wasn't sure of. It had just been there on the shelf in an innocent plastic see-through box and he'd picked it up without really thinking.

He took it out of the fridge despite his threat to L that if he didn't eat what Light gave him, he could bloody well _starve_; taking it from the box and cutting it cleanly in half before putting one of those halves onto a small plate. He put the other piece back into the box, which was returned to the fridge.

"Here," he said sulkily, putting it down in front of L. "This is what you want, isn't it?"

L looked down at the half-slice of strawberry cheesecake delicately arranged before him; his favorite, as he knew Light knew. He looked up at Light, who was watching him expectantly.

With a single, swift motion, L swept the plate onto the kitchen floor, a loud crash and an ugly yellow smear the only evidence that a perfectly good slice of cheesecake ever existed.

He stood up, observing Light's mixed expression – an amalgam of shock, offense and defeat.

"I don't need to eat," he said in a clipped tone. "I don't need to drink, because I'm _dead_. You should know that."

He stepped over the ruined cake towards the door, presenting Light with his back; and, even through his speechlessness at L's cruel action, the younger man noticed that – _somehow_ – the wraithlike detective was completely dry again.

"And why should _I_ know that?" Light asked quietly.

L glanced back at him, hand on the door frame; looking at him as thought he thought he was _stupid_.

"Because," he replied, a touch of incredulity lacing his voice, "_you_ killed me."

* * *

Too distracted and too unnerved by L's presence – though he knew that the dead detective could do nothing against him despite his knowledge that he was indeed Kira – Light found that he couldn't concentrate on his judgment. L had left the kitchen and Light hadn't seen him since, but the TV blared too loudly in an apartment that suddenly seemed too quiet; he knew L could probably hear it, hear the newscaster conveniently reading off the names of criminals that were easy bait to his murderer…

The difficulty wasn't, he realized, that L knew – it was just because L was _there_.

Why was it that, whilst L still had breath in his body, Light had had the strength and will in him to draw blood from his own finger and write in pinprick letters the name of the one from whom he would inherit back his precious Death Note – and all this while L was chained to his wrist and sitting not three feet from him?

And yet, now that he was _free_ to kill as Kira, right in _front_ of L, knowing he couldn't do anything to stop him…

Why did the nerve suddenly fail him? Why did he write only two names with a shaking hand before switching the TV off halfway through the news broadcast, letting silence fall like a heavy blanket over the apartment again?

Was it remorse, or…?

Or maybe it was just _because_ he hadn't seen L, _because_ L was keeping away from him. Maybe if L had been standing in the doorway, demanding that Light stop, threatening that even though he could no longer catch and convict him, he wouldn't let him kill anyone else now that he knew he was Kira…

If only he'd given Light a _reason_ to be defiant, a _reason_ to taunt him, it might have been easier to write down those names – to deafen himself with those death-wishes…

But L hadn't.

Light had quietly put the Death Note back into his drawer and gotten out some work for his university course instead; a half-finished 7000-word thesis due in two weeks from now.

Maybe it was just his pride – he didn't like that L, back and bitter from his gravesoil, was so easy to defeat. Maybe he hated that now that L knew he'd lost, he had no interest in battling it out with him anymore. Maybe Light just missed the sick thrill of knowing L knew, but also knowing that L had no way of _proving_ what he knew. Maybe he just missed the rigorous chase L had always put him through, and knowing he was here, in this very apartment and not doing _anything_ to stop him… the silence unsettled him.

Perhaps it was a sophisticated type of reverse psychology that L was employing, but Light seriously doubted that. L would never be so placid in his pursuit of Justice.

No, the truth of the matter was that L wasn't coming to stop him, and Light couldn't figure out _why _and it drove him to distraction until he had to do other things to keep his mind from hyperventilating.

It was a technique that he had been getting a lot of practice with recently, diverting his thoughts from unpalatable concepts with simple meaningless tasks.

The only music to his mind now was the _clacking_ of his keyboard and his thought-train, fully wired to '7000-word thesis' mode, as he sat and typed on his laptop at the kitchen table.

His fingers paused momentarily in their speedy typing when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw L materialize in the doorway, leaning against the door frame as though he hadn't the strength to support himself; Light did not look up completely, and after a second or two continued to type again, ignoring L utterly.

Maybe the old L would have come over to him, perched in the chair opposite, tilted his head, taken his thumbnail to his mouth for a thoughtful nibble, inquired what he was doing; the new one did none of that, simply standing there in cagey silence, watching him with those cold black eyes – again beyond the threshold, as though Light's revoked invitation barred him from coming in.

Light only wished that were the case – especially when L eventually _did_ step over it into the kitchen, his icy gaze ever on the younger man, and went to the fridge. He opened it, leaning against the door as he eventually pried his gaze from Light and averted it to the fridge contents.

Despite the fact that L had quite explicitly informed him that he neither needed to eat nor drink in his revived state, Light chose not to demand what he was doing – even though L had been rather destructive all day to a great many of Light's belongings, foodstuffs included, the young man found that he didn't, at this moment in time, exactly _care_ what L was doing.

It had occurred also to Light that L hadn't eaten earlier simply to be obtuse, despite the fact that he didn't actually need to – Light had seen him drink tea earlier. It probably just stood that he _could_ eat or drink, but didn't need the nutrition to keep his… _body_, if it could be called that, given its coldness and bloodlessness, sustained.

_Rather like Ryuk,_ Light remembered, noting that Ryuk had scarfed apples like Tic-Tacs even though he had said that Shinigami didn't need to eat.

For the record, Light had always doubted that Rem had even eaten that slice of cake L had given to her…

So maybe L was like a Shinigami in that sense – being "dead", it made sense that he wouldn't need to eat. His heart didn't beat, after all.

And it stood that Light still didn't care what L was doing when the dead detective took a carton of milk and the other half of the cheesecake slice in its plastic box from the fridge, letting it swing shut on its own as he left the kitchen, not looking at Light. The cake was for L anyway, so Light didn't care what he did with it – fundamentally, he should go demand his milk back, since no milk meant no morning coffee.

Light had never liked his coffee black – it was too bitter, and he didn't like the taste.

L had apparently never liked the taste of black coffee either, given that he had crammed six sugar cubes into each cup of it that Watari poured for him.

Light shook his head fiercely to clear away the vivid memory; no, that was the _old_ L.

The L that he had coerced Rem into murdering.

The L that he had…

…_loved._

He scorned himself this wretched sentimentality – almost forgotten and now dredged up again by L's sudden reappearance, but worsened by the fact that he just wasn't the same. That was understandable, of course – he was _dead_, after all, but it wasn't just that, it was that Light had killed him, Light had loved him and still killed him, of _course_ it was understandable that he wouldn't return to him as the same person—

Light could _understand_ his anger – his hatred and his frustration and his _pain_. He couldn't make it any better, given that he was the reason for it, the reason for his hatred and frustration and pain, the reason for his _death_…

The cause could never be the cure, not where L was concerned; Light knew that.

The Death Note, and Kira, and his judgments as such… That was different. Death to stop death, it worked, it got results, it instilled fear and awe and worship.

Though he knew he could never make L understand that. He wasn't sure if L _wanted_ to understand it; hell, he wasn't sure if L even _cared_ anymore. He seemed, on his return, to have adopted an "If I can't catch you, no-one can" mentality to the entire situation, more interested in tormenting Light with mind games and displays of depravity instead.

And so, not caring to provoke this vengeful creature – more inhuman and monstrous than Light had ever deemed him prior to his death – the young man safely chose not to go after him.

He could _have_ the damned milk, if that was all that it took to pacify his cruel and unpredictable whims.

As long as he left Light alone, he didn't care _what_ he did.

…But then L decided to start playing fairytales again, and that was when it changed.

* * *

It was almost 1:30am by the time Light finished the draft of his thesis – moreover because he was distracting himself with it.

If he was thinking about his thesis, he didn't have to think about L.

He finished his coffee as the laptop shut itself down – it had long since gone cold, but he hadn't made himself a fresh cup, since L had made off with the milk almost two hours ago. Pushing away from the table, he stood up and yawned, supposing he was going to have to face the inevitable:

Sleeping with this new version of L prowling around his apartment like an overgrown and pissed-off pet panther; one that hadn't had its claws removed.

What kind of idiot kept a panther as pet, anyway…?

…Maybe someone who had loved the panther once, when they'd first had it, when it was cute and affectionate and fairly tame, even with the fact that it was A PANTHER in mind; and now that it had outgrown that stupid phase, resentful at being caged like this and ready to tear its owner to shreds the second they let their guard down.

Someone who couldn't get rid of said panther.

Incidentally, Light was prepared to bet that "I See Dead People – Oh, Wait, I _Am_ One" L didn't need to sleep any more than he needed to eat. As if the insomniac version hadn't been bad enough – at least sometimes he had just collapsed, often off his chair face-first onto his keyboard, banging his head.

Light seriously didn't want the new L loitering in his bedroom while he slept, and resolved to grab him and lock him in the bathroom for the night. He seemed to like sitting in the bath with ice-cold water up to his waist while fully-clothed anyway…

Stepping out of the kitchen into the shadow-steeped corridor, Light blinked down at the carpet in puzzlement.

A small chunk of the cheesecake L had taken from the fridge earlier was on the floor right by his feet – planted there squarely and carefully, as the base was on the carpet, none of the soft filling touching the flooring itself.

Directly beyond it, leaving a gap of a few inches, was a fragment of broken mirror.

_What the hell…?_

Light stepped forward to pick up the piece of mirror – and, as he did so, noticed another tiny bit of cheesecake beyond it. Glancing up the corridor, his heart sank as he saw an entire path of alternating chunks of cheesecake and shattered mirror leading right the way up towards…

…the bedroom door.

_Trail of breadcrumbs…_

Light was afraid to follow that trail since he knew L was deliberately waiting for him at the other end of it, beyond that door – he certainly knew how to get his attention, at any rate.

What did he want?

Hesitating, reasoning that he could just sleep on the couch… Light eventually decided to follow L's little trail and confront him, ask him what he wanted. Why should he be afraid of the dead little bastard? Yes, he was dead – but that was exactly it. He was _dead_. He couldn't do anything to Light; Light had beaten him. L could put on a hit one-man Broadway musical about how Light Yagami was Kira and it wouldn't make a sliver of difference.

He was dead and a dead man's words counted for nothing.

Besides, if nothing else, it was Kira who did the terrorizing around here; not stupid little detectives who couldn't stay in their grave…

He picked up every piece of mirror as he followed L's trail up the corridor, pocketing them just as he pushed down the door handle and entered the bedroom; dark but for the lamp glaring at the bedside.

He found L sprawled on the double bed, upside down with his feet at the pillow, drinking the milk straight from the carton and in the messiest way he possibly could; it was on his mouth and splattered across his face and dribbling down his neck and soaked into his top and the bedsheets, looking as though he'd _missed_ his mouth several times on tilting it towards himself.

That wasn't what struck Light as oddest about the entire ensemble, though.

It was that the tri-colored kitten belonging to the man downstairs – the one appropriately named 'Ryuga' – was standing on L's chest, licking milk off his throat with its tiny pink tongue.

When L took the carton from his mouth, the cat stepped forwards and started to lick the residue off his face as well, kneading its paws affectionately over L's collar bone; it made Light feel sick to watch the damned thing licking milk off his actual mouth, and then watch him tilt the carton towards the _cat_ and let it messily drink from it, and then when the cat had had enough he still didn't take the carton away so that it poured all over the animal's head and onto his own chest, and then he took it back to his own mouth and started drinking again—

"_L_!" Light interjected after a shocked second, having to wait for his mind to start functioning again after seeing something so unexpected appear on his bed. "Stop it! That's _disgusting_!"

L stopped promptly, propping himself up in his elbows, holding the carton in his odd way as he smiled lazily at Light.

"Yes, it's very unhygienic," he agreed quietly, smirking blackly, the slick tip of a tongue swiping over his lips for just an instant, as though taunting the very notion. "I should be more careful, don't you think? I might get sick. I might even _die_…"

Light took a shuddering breath, reigning in his repulsion.

"You're telling me," he said quietly, his voice shaking with mingled rage and unease, "that you staged all of this… just to remind me _again_ that I killed you?"

L tilted his head, milk now dripping to one side.

"I don't think I needed to _remind_ you," he reasoned.

Light pointed at the kitten, still licking milk off L's skin.

"How did that cat get in here?" He demanded.

"I let it in." L nodded towards the bedroom window. "It was meowing at the window. It seemed hungry, so I thought I would get it some milk."

"How kind of you," Light seethed. "And you couldn't put it in a dish like a normal person _because_…?"

"Because I'm not a normal person." The cat was licking at his mouth again with its tiny sandpaper tongue and L didn't stop it or push it away, though it made Light sick to watch.

He didn't hate cats, and he knew they were actually fairly clean as far as animals went, but… it still grossed him out immensely. It was so unnatural and disgusting, and perhaps worse was that L was so utterly _passionless_ about it. He either hadn't noticed that the cat was licking him or he didn't care.

Though, as his sarcasm had so eloquently pointed out, it wasn't as though this was exactly going to do _L_ any harm…

"I'm not a person at all," L said expressionlessly. "It's as you said, I'm just a corpse. Nothing but an empty shell."

"But you can still _think_!" Light snapped. "And it's surely only common _sense_ to use a dish for the damned cat and a glass for yourself!"

As though to make a point, Light snatched up the empty glass he kept at his bedside for water, stepped forward and tore the milk away from L, pouring what little was left of it into the tumbler and throwing the empty carton to the floor.

L sat up as Light did so, then stood; the cat was clinging to his top, clambering to his shoulder, and Light was unsure as to why the thing had taken such a shine to him, no other animal had ever behaved this way around L…

"Here," Light spat, pressing the glass into L's hand just as the kitten got onto his shoulder, able to perch there comfortably due to its tiny size.

L held the glass for a moment or two, watching Light, both of them perfectly still—

And then he threw the milk into Light's face.

Light blinked, stunned; not registering exactly what…

Still holding the glass, L stepped back from him, smiling; the smile not really betraying anything. It was just a smile, and yet that made it more infuriating than a smirk or a grin or even a leer—

His temper finally hit critical mass and detonated, giving his built-up confusion and frustration and _hate_ a sufficient physical outlet; Light threw his weight into L, knocking him back to the bed, his hands going around his throat in a blind acidic rage.

"Do you think that will kill me, Light-kun?" L asked, Light's only response was to grip tighter, his face pale and contorted by detached fury as he knelt on top of the man he'd already killed once before.

The kitten, near-crushed beneath their weight, writhed out from beneath L's shoulder with a high-pitched yowl; flashing out needle-like claws and tearing them across Light's wrist.

"_Ah_!" Light snatched his hands from L's neck, his left hand clutching at the hot scratches oozing blood on his right wrist.

Though he had not hurt him in any way, L took advantage of Light loosening his grip, slamming his bare feet squarely into the center of the younger man's chest and kicking him clear off, where he landed on his back with a hard and heavy _thud_ several feet from the bed.

"Let's not return to physical combat, Light-kun," L said, his tone blasé. "Though your chances were slim in our matches before, now there is no way you can win. I feel no pain and cannot be physically harmed in any way."

Light sat up breathlessly, his entire spine aching; glaring at L with utmost hatred and fear intermingled. L merely tilted his head in response, the obtuse action igniting the inferno in Light's blood only more so. He staggered to his feet, going to the bed and snatching up the cat by the scruff of its neck; it hissed at him, swiping again with its claws, but he got a firm hold on it and started out of the bedroom with it squirming in his tight grip.

He slammed the door, not caring if L was still there or not when he got back.

The damned kitten put up a fight, suddenly more aggressive than he'd ever seen it – it had never behaved this way towards him before, nor to Misa. It had always acted…

…the way it did around L.

Still, he got to the front door with it, opening it ready to turf the cat out into the corridor; and found, the man from downstairs with his finger just reaching for the doorbell.

Relieved, he thrust the disgruntled animal at him, taking him by surprise.

"Here's your cat," he said coldly, wiping a strand of milk-sodden hair from his honey-brown eyes.

The man blinked, holding the squirming "Ryuga".

"It got into my apartment," Light threaded wearily. "I gave it some milk, we had a bit of a disagreement…" He gestured to his hair, then flashed his ripped wrist.

"Oh." The man looked down at the kitten, now quite placid in the arms of its owner, yet still cagily regarding Light. "I'm… very sorry about that."

"It's okay," Light muttered, turning to go back inside.

"Hey," the man said, stopping him.

"What?"

"I heard a thud. That's why I came up. Is… everything okay in there?"

"Yeah, everything's fine." Light smiled at him. "I just tripped chasing your cat."

"What shattered earlier?"

Light's eyes narrowed; this guy was starting to piss him off.

"Just a mirror. It fell off the bathroom wall while I was out."

Well, it was only a half-lie…

The man gave an uneasy nod.

"Okay, uh… Guess I'll see you tomorrow or something, then." He took his damnable cat and went off downstairs with it, leaving Light to sigh deeply and close the door.

Great, now the guy downstairs was suspicious of him. Probably thought he was some serial killer or something, keeping hostages in his apartment and now one of his half-mutilated victims had twice attempted to escape, causing questionable smashes and thuds…

Well, the serial killer part was right, ironically enough; and wasn't it strange that, in that other time, when Misa had been here with him (_two_ serial killers living above this guy) no escapades of such a suspicious nature had taken place…?

…Was that what L was hoping for? To cause so much mayhem that Light's neighbors would become suspicious and eventually call the police on him? And surely then the police would search the house—

Not that they'd find the Death Note, Light was far too smart for that, but still, for L to _try_—

Light had to confront L, he knew. His second chance at life was at stake, something he kept firmly in mind as he stalked back to the room.

"What do you want?" Light asked in a low voice upon entering the bedroom, closing the door behind him again.

L was lying on the bed again, this time the right way up – and Light noticed that, as with earlier, he was completely, inexplicably dry once more. He decided to ignore such a trivial, if baffling, matter, and battle on with L.

The dead detective glanced across the room at him.

"Do you remember," he said, averting his gaze back to the ceiling, "that once I asked you if… the simplicity of us lying together in bed was our Heaven?"

And when Light was silent, L continued;

"You replied that you weren't sure, your reason being that you had never died, so you didn't know what Heaven was like."

Light paused, remembering quite clearly that bright morning. The comment had gummed on the back of his mind, hung there for years waiting to be pondered over, yet he didn't want to admit to it, though he wasn't sure why exactly; perhaps just wanting L to hear explain it to him now caused him to shake his head and murmur—

"I… I don't remember."

L glanced at him again, as though reading the lie in his eyes as clearly as he read Kira's presence.

"It doesn't matter." He gave a shrug. "The point is we both made presumptions about Heaven that were… wrong."

"Yeah?"

L nodded absently.

"I was wrong," he said calmly. "To be honest, while I was alive… I didn't believe in Heaven. I didn't believe in Hell. I didn't believe in God – in fact, I still don't believe in God, Light-kun. I'm not sure I really believe in Heaven or Hell either."

"But you said—"

"I wasn't finished. What I mean to say is… when I spoke of Heaven to you that day, I didn't mean it seriously. It was just a term, as people will often use it. It was my way of saying that I liked being with you, that I felt that… if there _was_ a Heaven, that would be mine. One with you in it, do you see?"

The dead detective gave a small, humorless laugh.

"I was wrong, though," he said again. "Wrong about all sorts of things. First and foremost, _any_ kind of Heaven would be one without you in it, Light-kun, isn't that right? Death Note users don't get the privilege, or so I've heard."

Light clenched his fists; remembered, in flash-point snippets in the back of his mind, the overwhelming, crushing, caustic nothingness, that agonizing blindness that was Mu—

"Secondly, I was wrong about the existence of Heaven. There _is_ one. I know, I've been there." L looked at Light again. "And thirdly, as a combination of the two… I was wrong about thinking my Heaven would be one with your presence. It's not just me being bitter and spiteful because you murdered me, Light-kun – I didn't choose it that way. It's just fact. Heaven was a place without you, and I was happy. Happier than I have ever been – happier even than I was with you." L sat up a little, tilting his head at Light. "And whatever unease is between us as of right now, Light-kun… I will not deny that I _was_ happy with you. I loved you very much."

"If Heaven was so wonderful," Light spat, "why did you just say that you still don't think you believe in it?"

"I'm speaking of the Christian variety. The popular variety. It isn't like that. There are no harps and angels; you don't meet the dog you had when you were a child or your dead grandmother."

"Then what—?"

"I can't explain it. I can't tell you what it's like." L gave a sigh. "Heaven – and maybe it wasn't _even_ Heaven, that's just what seems to be a fitting name, you understand – isn't a mortal place, and right now, I have only mortal words to describe it. It is intangible in any human language. I can't tell you in Japanese, and I can't tell you in English. Maybe the best way to describe it, if I were to try, would be… _bliss_, but… that's not right. That doesn't do it justice. I can't explain it. I just can't. It would be like seizing a spinning top to try and capture its motion, or turning up the gas quickly enough to see what darkness looks like. It simply can't be done."

He sat up completely, looking over at Light, who was standing still relatively near the door. And despite his assertion that it was impossible to describe, he continued talking when Light gave no response, as if he felt it was necessary to fill in the silence.

"It's just… you're still aware of yourself, but you're not human anymore, so you begin to think outside human capacity, above mortal capability, and that's why I can't explain it to you. I understood things there that I can't understand anymore. But it's an overwhelming sense of peace, and nothing matters anymore, and everything stops _hurting_… All the pain, everything, it all goes away, and you're… _free_."

Light took a step forward; it was strange to hear L talking like this, these foreign words about bliss and inner peace and freedom spilling from his mouth when he should have been speaking in percentages and cold hard facts. This wasn't right, this wasn't L, this…

Yes, that was right – this _wasn't_ L. Light kept forgetting that.

Kept forgetting this was an L who had died – had known another existence since then.

"Then, if it was so wonderful," Light bit out through gritted teeth, "why don't you just go the hell back and leave me alone…?"

L leaned forwards toward him, those black eyes taking on something of a demented glint; clutching at his own shoulders as though trying to hold himself together.

"You think I came here to _haunt_ you?" He hissed. "You are honestly so arrogant as to believe that I _chose_ to be sent back, just so I could sit here in your apartment and watch you destroy the world? I didn't want to come back, I _never_ wanted to come back here ever again – Do you think I would willingly give up the reward I earned; for _you_, the one who _killed_ me? Do you honestly think so highly of yourself to believe that I would be obsessed beyond death, even enough to cast myself from _Heaven_?"

Light halted; it _was_ quite an arrogant assumption, but…

L had died _because_ of him; because of his vow to catch Kira. If only that alone was a reason for L's resurrection, Light would have believed it.

"Don't you see?" L pressed, leaning further forward again, by now on his knees; "You meant more to me than anyone else ever has, Light Yagami. I hated you and loved you with equal vigor, with _everything_ that I had, because I gave no love or hate to anyone else. In many ways, you were the _only_ thing that ever meant anything to me at all, and in that alone, you might be warranted in believing that a reason for me to haul myself from my peace and my grave to return to you, wanting revenge or an apology, but… those are _human_ emotions. That is what a _human_ would do. But I… I was beyond humanity. I don't even remember what it is to _be_ human anymore, Light-kun. I can't remember what those emotions are like. You may have been dead a hundred years, but you were not elevated above human understanding as I was. To you, it seems natural that the only reason I am here is my anger at you, because that's the human thing to do. But it's not true. No matter what you meant to me when I understood things only from a human perspective… I would never have given up Heaven for you. I would never have come back here of my own volition. Once, I didn't want to die because it would mean losing you – now I don't want to live, even if it _does_."

"But you _are_ angry at me," Light said, his voice low and dangerous, deceptively sulky.

L leaned back, his black eyes returning to their usual size.

"Of course I'm angry," he said dully. "I'm angry about so many things. I'm angry about your lies – to me, to your father, to people who cared about you; and I'm angry at your methods – I told you, Light-kun. I do not believe in God – _any_ god, and so I do not agree with Kira. No matter your 'greater good' theories and your Biblical analogies, I will never agree with you. I will never accept your actions as being the right ones, even if I can do nothing to stop you. I'm angry about the innocent people you killed on top of those who were not so innocent; Ray Penber, Naomi Misora, those other agents, Watari… And yes, I am angry that you killed _me_. I am furious that you killed me, and not just because you loved me. I am simply angry. It is a natural reaction. I'm sure you can understand that."

Light gave a small nod – even though L's voice was utterly expressionless now, conveying no anger whatsoever.

"Though if you wonder what contempt it is to which I hold you now," L went on, "it is none of those. You are angry that I am here, invading your life and your home – the life that he been re-granted to you? Believe me, Light-kun – _I_ am angrier yet. If you think I want to be here, you are sorely mistaken."

"How is that _my_ fault?" Light snapped defensively.

"I'm here because you're here," L said coldly. "I was torn out of Heaven because of you; sent back here, to this _Hell_…"

"This is not _Hell_," Light hissed, finally approaching the bed. "This world has never been _less_ of a Hell. Crime figures have dropped dramatically in the past four years, the streets are safer, wars are less common… You may not believe in a God, L; you may not believe in my righteousness, my justice, but there are millions of people out there who _do_, and I'm doing it for them!"

"You're as arrogant as ever, Light-kun." L gave a small, twisted smile. "How delightful. I hoped I wouldn't be disappointed, no matter my anguish at being thrown out—"

"_Go back then!_" Light blazed. "I don't want you here, you don't want to be here…! Go back to your special little world of utmost bliss and sparkly clouds, and leave me alone in mine so I can make it better. When I'm finished, this will be a Heaven far greater than yours – a Heaven for humans with human understanding, as they are meant to be. This will be a living reward for those who are good."

"There _is_ a reward for humans who are good," L said quietly. "Your world, created by blood and death, isn't it."

"_Go back_," Light said again, his voice barely more than a whisper.

L blinked at him.

"Do you," he said slowly and softly, "honestly think I would still be here… if I _could_?"

Breathing deeply, Light flexed his fingers a few times.

"Well, how long is it until you can?"

"Never!" L reached up, grabbing at Light's shirt as though he was in the pain he said he could not feel. "Don't you _understand_?! I can't ever go back! I've been cast out of Heaven, torn from that transcended state, and sent back here, sent back to Earth, because of _you_…! Once you've been expelled from Heaven, it's impossible to go back. And I'm nothing now, nothing but a spliced, wretched creature – too transcended to be a human, too long dead and beyond this mortal realm to be forced back into this existence, and yet I've been crammed back into… into _this_!"

He let go of Light's shirt, holding out his spread hands in front of him, staring at them now in utmost despair.

"_All the pain was gone_," he said softly, "and now… Now I'm cursed back into this worthless human… _shell_…"

He looked up at Light, his expression unreadable.

"_Do you know how much it hurts?_" He asked softly. "To have been where I was, to have known the things I knew… and then… and then _this_." He took a breath, taking his own shoulders again. "I don't belong here anymore. It's not just that I died three years ago and no longer exist, it's… I really don't _belong_ here. This realm is not for me anymore. It hurts so much, I feel so… _trapped_…"

"L, I…"

Light couldn't say anything; he still didn't understand exactly what it was that L meant, which was understandable, given that he could not know what L had known – and it wasn't _pity_ he felt for L either, he knew L would never want pity, and besides, how could he _feel_ pity for…?

But…

"…You're sorry?" L finished bitterly, looking up at him. "Don't be. It's not like you can understand what it is you're apologizing for anyway…"

Light said nothing. He had nothing to say, nothing at all; so L sealed the deal instead:

"I don't hate you for killing me, Light," he whispered; and he reached up and touched his face, his fingertips like ice. "I hate you for bringing me back."

Light sank to his knees on the carpet, his legs suddenly giving out on him as his kneecaps liquefied underneath the weight of the whispered words; he had nothing to say, nothing to do, and it wasn't like him – he, Light Yagami – to be rendered speechless like this, least of all by L, his equal, his…

"Kira cries?" L tilted his head a little, looking down at Light; the young man – barely older than a boy, at only twenty-one – on his knees before him, chocolate eyes glazed and open and leaking silent tears down his pale, perfect face.

L wiped them away on his sleeve without a word, making Light look up at him.

He hadn't last cried since… Well, the death of his father, in a time past to him, but in the future here, and yet, all the _present_, somehow…

And before that… his tears had been for _L_.

The deaths of two people that, despite his _own_ dealing of death… had meant something to him. _More_ than something.

Though in different ways, they were people he had _loved_.

An overpowering love of so many years ago, one that he had been forced to conceal in order to function; hidden deeper than he could have imagined, stiffly mummified in dusty swathes of misrepresented autobiographical propaganda and Kiraesque disgust. Only now, L was unwrapping all the tightly-bound layers with his talk of heaven, and hate, and love, and Light wasn't sure he could handle confronting what he had doggedly suppressed for so long.

Because now he had changed, now L had changed…

Now he…

He reached up, grasping hold of the front of L's white top and hauling him down off the bed; onto his knees on the bedroom floor so that Light could put his arms around his shoulders and back and pull him into a tight embrace, his cheek flush against the dead detective's shoulder.

And though he could feel the icy coldness of L's skin – and, in contrast, felt no rhythmic thud of his heart – against his own body, Light only held him tighter still; feeling L eventually grab at him as well.

"L, do you know…" Light whispered, his voice hoarse with tears, then paused; as L lifted his head, and Light did the same so their gazes could meet on the same level.

Still no reflection.

_You don't need to show me Kira. We both know it's true. It's why we died – both of us._

"_L, do you know,_" Light said again, softer still, "…_how much I missed you?_"

L said nothing; cold and dead in Light's arms, as he had been before, though now able to know that the boy had kept his promise.

He'd kept _all_ of his promises.

And when L said nothing, Kira kissed him.

* * *

**Narroch: **And thus, the necrophilia drama begins! Dun dun duuun! (facepalm) I am not sure if this would technically classify as necrophilia, but we won't let a little labeling issue like that bother us from writing it!

**RobinRocks: **Let's not go into that…

Anyone who finds the cat thing really weird – it's inspired by a scene from _Batman Returns_ (the second Tim Burton _Batman_ movie), where Selina Kyle goes a bit crazy after being shoved out of a window and "dying", resurrected as Catwoman by a bunch of cats who start licking her and weird stuffz…

Speaking of _Batman_… Heath Ledger?! Who saw _that_ one coming? RIP, Heath. You were cool, and my friend Esther loved you. :)

In other news… Heh, thanks for voting on the new poll! I'm happy to announce that the "Light" choice is winning for the "What do you call him?" question; ugh, no offence if you call him Raito, but I really HATE that name for him, because it ISN'T his name – it's the Japanese pronunciation of "Light", NOT a translation.

But, hey, carry on, Raito-peoples.

Secondly, **BakayaroManiac** did a piece of art of _Poison Apple_! It's really cool and there's a link in my profile up at the top for it, if you want to take a look! Please do!

Lastly, I wrote an LxLight birthday piece for Narroch, called _Are You, Or Have You Ever Been?_. You should, like, read it, or something…

TTYS, guys, for Chapter Three of _Danse Macabre_!

- RobinRocks and Narroch xXx


	15. Ballroom Blitz

**RobinRocks: **Well… yes. It _is_ Valentine's Day. Lookit us update for it, how lame we are… :)

**Narroch: **Honestly, in my opinion Valentines Day is a bull shit holiday. Be my Valentine? What does that even mean... The title holds no significant meaning since it can apply to your lover, your sister, your classmate, or even that dude down the street who sells you hotdogs for one dollar instead of three (well, he does that for me anyway...). The only thing Valentines is good for is getting chocolate, one of the major four food groups.

**RobinRocks:** She had to get her two cents in there, you see… O.o Honestly, we're updating today for the grim irony of it. It wouldn't be so harsh if only we were still on the cute little chain arc, but… we're not.

MORE IMPORTANTLY: Confession on my part? This chapter is inspired by _Princess Tutu_. For anyone who hasn't seen this anime series, I would strongly recommend it. Yes, it sounds like a Barbie anime – but I was _wrong_ to mock it and quite happily take back all the stupid judgmental things I said about it prior to watching it. It's beautiful, twisted and actually quite dark – and this chapter takes heavy inspiration from it. Quite frankly, if there was ever another anime series to make up a perfect pair with _Death Note_ in specific reference to _Poison Apple_, _Princess Tutu_ is it, given how heavily steeped in fairytales it is.

**Narroch: **Pretty much, the main thrust of this chapter is to explicitly explore the dance motif, and introduce the protagonists for this arc (!), and of course, resolve the intimate scene we left you all with last chapter. Mwaha!

Thankyou to: **Airia Black, Nyx-Zephyrus, Lawliet's Angel, Leh.Moldeh, Reese Craven, Stargirl7, Forever-Dawn, Sister Salsa, Fouloldron, Santri, AutumnDynasty, Bloodshot Eyes, mornir-brightflame, shad0wflame, choticati, tsuki aoi usagi, shesaidisaid, PurpleEyed, Jenna, Mayura-Hikari-090, Silent Dagger, ElegantArrow64, KitsuneChibiko, Lawliet-loves-Raito, Accidental Affinity, DoYouFindMeDreadful, hittocerebattosai, WingedBonnie, Itallia, Li the Twilight Knight, Oztan, Spryte, Phoenix of Hell, Trin, anja-chan, Zaybex, DaRk MiKo18, Gabo, blueeyedchibi, unsolvedenigma, Aqua, Isis Chandra Wu, SOMA-King, yellowrose87, Mihael-Kun, Inu-yokai911, Aqua, Death-to-the-tadpoleclowns, Tamouri, Heck, antiheroine, Caeru, BakayaroManiac, Liviania, DecemberFox, sinful ang3l, Luna, hangliderswing, Aryiana, daiyu amaya, All Things Anime, animebishieluver, Vandervort, nazgurl, Kristaismyname, Ashinan, Vampyra142001, JMAN, Kiyoiyuki, **and **CanIInterestYouInThisLifeOfMin**!

As a final note – PLEASE do not be thrown off by the beginning of this chapter. It is not linear, as you will see, so please pay attention. :D

* * *

'_Save the fairyland we live in,_

_Where my failings are forgiven…'_

- Angelzoom, _Fairyland_

* * *

Ballroom Blitz

Being a super pop star certainly had its disadvantages; the stalker paparazzi and obsessive fans being the top irritants. But in general, the perks far outweighed the inconveniences, and made the life of glamour appealing even when under a diluted form of house arrest. She still had the adoration of the public, top of the line fashion picks, and a pushover manager who would bend over backwards to fulfill her every negligible whim. She was perfectly groomed for her role as the public's darling idol, and as such was also primed for the position of power that came with that spotlight; wielding her leverage with an efficient balance of bratty demand and fetching pout.

Simply put, Misa Amane didn't take no for an answer.

Thus, in demanding that Light dance with her to her (current) favorite song, she expected him to do so immediately and without complaint; he _did_ complain, incidentally, but by the time he had hobbled together a lame excuse, she had already seized his wrists and hauled up him. She was then skipping and twirling around him, holding onto his hands while he rotated lethargically in place, keeping up with her prancing. Her skirt flared coyly and her tiny bunches swung wildly while her bracelets jangled and her necklaces gleamed, turning her exuberant movements into a shellac for the senses, carefully varnishing the moment in spontaneous joy.

It was some bouncy synth-heavy J-pop song that set her off. Misa's musical tastes varied, usually to match her wardrobe choice for the day, though Light couldn't say he was particularly enamored with any song or band Misa happened to like; and, for the record, he wasn't a very big fan of dancing, either.

It was such a pointless past-time, only a formalized socialization structure with no concrete yield and therefore he had no interest in it.

L didn't rescue him from Misa's overzealous choreography. In fact, L was thoroughly _un_helpful, perching on the couch with his head tilted curiously to one side, watching Misa prance around, hauling Light with her amidst his ineffective protests. _So_ unhelpful, in fact, that he made no effort to move at all, making an anchor of himself to Light – so that when Misa made them both spin around a few times, Light ended up thoroughly ensnared by the chain, the thing wrapped around his arms and torso.

Misa giggled as she watched him unwind himself like a drunken reverse top, and then turned her bright gaze on L.

"Come on, Ryuzaki!" She cried gleefully, holding out her hands to him, completely expecting her infectious delight to buoy up the lackadaisical detective as well. "You have to dance too!"

L blinked at her in mute skepticism.

"No thankyou, Misa-san." He sipped complacently at his tea as she pouted.

"No fair, Ryuzaki," she whined. "Light is getting all tangled up because of you. If you won't dance, take off the handcuffs for a moment so he can dance with me."

"Uh, Misa—" Light started, already knowing the road where such requests led.

"I don't think so, Misa-san," L interrupted, his tone deceptively pleasant. "Incidentally, for someone under suspicion of being the Second Kira to demand that I release someone suspected of being the First Kira is highly reprehensible. You are doing neither Light-kun nor yourself any favors by making such a request."

Light rolled his eyes; it was all very well to jump down _his_ throat with such snide logical reasoning, because Light knew, at the end of the day, L only did it to piss him off, to barb a reaction from him – but Misa was below the threshold of L's intelligence, making her difficult to bait.

As though to prove Light's interior reasoning correct, Misa responded in typical fashion by sticking out her tongue and winding her arms around the brunette's neck, swaying her hips in a way that made the material of her skirt sway coquettishly too. She shot a gaze or two over her shoulder at L, which L met with his usual deadpan visage, and Light wasn't sure which of them was being more of a bitch at this point.

Still, Misa seemed entertained, which Light was grateful for; despite the fact that he had L attached to his wrist, Misa often still demanded that dates constituted kisses and other things, and though the pretty model was perhaps capable of mentally etching L out of the scene, Light didn't possess such a skill.

Though maybe that was solely because he was acutely aware that _he_ was going to be hauled into the bedroom by the detective later tonight and slammed so hard into the mattress that he left a Light-shaped indent in it, whereas Misa got off scot-free on that count.

And on that note, Light could tell, from the subtle fidgeting and tiny downward tug on his lips, that L was started to get pissed off over there, seeing Misa pour herself all over Light like syrup – as if just generally being in her excitable presence alone wasn't enough to tick him in the first place – and Light didn't like L very much when he was pissed off.

Especially not when it was his turn to top that night.

"Okay, Misa…" Light smoothly unwound her from himself as he had with the chain. "Ryuzaki and I have work to do. We should really—"

"No!" Misa protested shrilly, reattaching herself to his arm like a limpet. "You can't go just yet, you only just got here!"

"Misa, we've been here for… what, two hours now?"

"Two hours, sixteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds," L hawked precisely from the couch.

"Thankyou, Ryuzaki." Light didn't even look at him, folding his arms and strengthening the mental bulwarks as he sensed Misa descending into her cute-little-pout routine. "It's good enough of the whole team to let us take some time out to come up here and spend time with you, Misa. You know we're in the middle of a very important investigation. Can't you be grateful?"

"But Misa misses Light _so_ much!" Misa whined, clinging tighter still to his arm, pressing soft breasts not-so-inconspicuously onto him. "Please just stay a little while longer! Misa-Misa gets lonely without her Light!" Her lips pursed into a pitying ruby pucker, while her head tilted at just the right angle for a deserted-puppy look and her blue eyes grew wide with premature abandonment.Light had to hand it to the girl – ever since she had widened her work range to include acting, she really knew how to lay it on thick.

"Misa…" Light glanced at L, who had risen from the couch and was approaching, his expression betraying nothing of his – what Light presumed to be – severe annoyance.

"I apologize, Misa-san," L said, tilting his head a little. "Light-kun is right, we have much work to do."

Ah, no, Light was wrong; that wasn't annoyance in L's tone. He was _gloating_.

"Okay, just one more song?" Misa pleaded, turning her beseeching gaze onto the unaffected detective. "_Please_? Light? Ryuzaki?"

Incidentally, Misa didn't give them much of a chance to respond to her, grabbing both of their hands as the CD switched over to a new song and whirling all three of them around in a circle; pausing only to giggle and flap her hand at them.

"You two have to hold hands or it won't work, silly!" She said gleefully, reaching across and pressing their hands together before stepping back into place and linking up again to set them rotating like some uncoordinated amoeba. They stumbled about, the tempo the music set becoming more of a background suggestion than a necessary musical pace, for all the grace their "dance" heeded from it. In the end, Misa didn't last long before she collapsed out of dizziness, giggling wildly; leaving L and Light to halt up, stumbling a little themselves, and stand over her in typical male awkwardness.

"The music… is still going…" Misa panted, clutching her side from the pain of laughing so hard while her eyes glittered with twin sapphires of mirth. "Keep dancing… _Keep dancing!_"

Light blinked at her, bewildered by the request.

"Without you, Misa?" He questioned tentatively, hoping to be let off the hook by bringing up the touchy subject of excluding her.

Misa answered him by dissolving into another fit of neighing giggles, at which Light glanced at L.

"Maybe we should just go," he said, eyeing the door with not a small amount of longing.

L blinked at him, dark eyes wide and, as always, ready to throw a curve at him with every presented opportunity.

"You don't find this fun, Light-kun?"

Light rolled his eyes, shooting a glance at Misa; who was on her knees by now, clapping her hands together happily as she beamed between the two of them.

"No, this is stupid," he replied, his voice like acid as he danced a few further utterly graceless steps with L; before the pair of them stumbled out of dizziness that clung still and tripped over the chain which so innocently tangled their legs together.

"_How divine_," L murmured, leaning down beside Light's ear as they flopped on the floor together.

"I _told_ you it was—"

Light got no further, cut off and caught by surprise by L suddenly _kissing_ him—

_Right in front of Misa_.

The teenager failed to return the gesture, far too stunned by the blatant obtuseness and sheer madness of L's action – and if he thought that maybe he was simply imagining it, that surely _L_ would never do something so… well, "reckless" wasn't the right word, of _course_ L was reckless – demanding that Kira kill him live on TV simply to determine whether or not he needed a name and face, or revealing himself as L to his prime suspect, or getting himself involved in an intimate relationship with said suspect – Light surely had never met anyone _more_ reckless than L, but…

Well, Misa's shrill, outraged shriek managed to successfully dissipate any notions Light might have had that this wasn't happening; nor indeed that Misa was apparently, rather _like_ L, much stronger than she looked, fully able to haul the detective off her "boyfriend" despite her smaller build.

Then again, that might have had something to do with L weighing about 110 pounds; Light knew this, using it to his advantage to put L out of bed when he was being a pest.

"_How dare you kiss Misa's Light, you pervert!_" Misa thundered with all her indignant blonde fury, planting herself squarely between L and what she considered to be her personal property.

_Talk your way out of this one, Ryuzaki, you idiot,_ Light sighed inwardly.

Of course, being on identical par with Light Yagami at everything and anything, L didn't fail to rise to such a challenge, unvoiced or not; smiling that sweet little smile of his right at Misa – the smile that Light recognized as his most dangerous, having the appearance of being his most innocent.

"I was merely taking the liberty of testing you, Misa-san," he said smoothly; Light catching the patronizing edge to his voice where Misa did not. "I wondered how quickly it would take you to react to such an advance on your boyfriend."

L glanced at the ceiling, taking his thumbnail to his mouth in mock deliberation.

"Incidentally, you reacted very quickly indeed," he went on thoughtfully. "Thus I can only conclude that Misa-san loves Light-kun very much, making her the ideal girlfriend for him."

"Oh, Ryuzaki!" Misa cried, the prized compliment of "ideal girlfriend" cracking her bristling defense immediately as she threw her arms around his neck.

Light rolled his eyes in mingled disgust and pity; this was about the fourth time L had thrown her a virtually identical line and she'd fallen for it – hook, line and sinker.

Still, that was Misa – blissfully ignorant, even about the satisfied smirk that L was casting in Light's direction over her shoulder.

Having eventually pried Misa first off L, then off himself, Light allowed the detective to lead him by the chain back up to their own quarters.

"That was dumb," he said coolly.

L glanced over his shoulder at him.

"Do you think so?" He inquired.

"Of course I do." Light snapped.

"It was only Misa-san, Light-kun."

"Yeah, and you only did it to get back at her for draping herself all over me."

"Childish, don't you think?" L agreed airily.

"What about the cameras?" Light bit out, all-too-aware of them since they'd caught _him_ out.

"I switched them off before we went up to Amane's room."

Light stopped halfway up the stairs, stunned by L's sudden dismissal of his own security measures.

"You hypocrite!" He spat. "I can't _believe_—"

L shrugged, pulling Light on again.

"I don't need you telling me how to run my investigation, Light-kun," he interrupted icily.

"You sure about that?" Light said, his voice low.

L whirled on him; though said nothing, the glint in his dark eyes speaking for him, leaving Light as mildly astonished as always by how L could rearrange his expression from utterly impassive to innocently bewildered to truly intimidating with no apparent effort.

Still, Light was not one to back down easily to anyone – world's greatest detective or not – and narrowed his own eyes, glaring up at L; _having_ to glare up at him despite L's horrific posture given that the older man was standing a few steps higher than him.

"You speak as though you _know_ you are guilty, Light-kun," L said curiously. "As though I _should_ be keeping a close eye on you."

"I'm _not_ Kira," Light spat, brandishing the chain upwards so that it clinked musically, "but if you're going to _insist_ on keeping me chained up like this, shouldn't you do the thing wholeheartedly?"

L's scowl rearranged itself into a haughty smile.

"You speak like your father, Light-kun," he said, somewhat enigmatically.

Light only glowered more deeply at him.

"I'm sure my father would agree with me," he hissed. "Face it, _L_; you're losing interest in all of this. You're not trying as hard to catch Kira, or, expose _me_ as—"

"That's _enough_ from you!" L snapped, smile shattering like glass. "It's not as easy as simply handing you over saying you're Kira, not if there's no evidence; just as it isn't as easy as simply believing you and setting you free when you deny my allegations against you. I might have a prestigious reputation, Light-kun, but even anything _I_ say is worthless if I can't prove it. I need to _know_ that you're Kira, I need to _see_ you kill, I need you to _confess_…"

L stepped down towards Light, closing the gap between them.

"…Though," he went on dangerously, "I suspect you know this already, Light-kun. You are intelligent, you have helped with investigations before. If anything, it is your knowledge of this that aids you in eluding your capture and conviction."

"I just want you to catch Kira already so Misa and I can go free!" Light blazed.

"Then if you're so certain of your innocence," L reasoned, "what does it matter if I neglect to leave the cameras running at all times?"

He leaned back away from Light without waiting for an answer – they'd been only centimeters apart, L's defunct sense of personal space becoming painfully apparent again – and stalked away with his hands in his pockets, hauling the boy after him when the chain became taut.

Maybe Light wouldn't have minded so much the nature of L's defense, or his irritance at being told how to do his job by an eighteen year old Kira suspect, knowing they were all valid points; L was older… _wiser_…?

Well, maybe he _had_ been, once.

Light was certain he wasn't Kira, but it seemed unfair that L's attempts to reveal him as such should have become so half-assed; either investigate him thoroughly or let him go.

Though it was _more_ than just that now, wasn't it? Light was only reminded of the hypocrisy of the entire situation when, on entering their own quarters, L wordlessly took him straight through the kitchen and living room and along the corridor into the bedroom; locking the door and turning off his phone and telling Light to do the same before throwing both devices onto the floor.

Maybe L kidded himself that this was part of his investigation into Light Yagami; an unorthodox way to get to know him intimately, to try and force secrets from his lips, but it wasn't true. It _couldn't_ be true, because L rarely said the word "Kira" beyond the bedroom door these days, trading the codename in for strings of breathless English or endless reels of Light's name, both with and without the honorary.

Yes, Light wouldn't have minded; hell, maybe he _didn't_ mind…

But he clutched L afterwards as they lay entangled in their fairyland, skin hot and flush, and knew there were others who wouldn't be as forgiving of L's failings as he.

* * *

"Here."

Light handed L a cup of coffee, then went to sit opposite him with his own. Incidentally, he was going to need its reviving effects more so than the detective, he suspected, given their irregular routine that day.

Maybe the juvenile thrill of being the equivalent of the high school bitch and kissing someone else's boyfriend right in front of her was some bizarre kink of L's, given that he'd hauled Light into the bedroom immediately on returning from the date with Misa, the result of which had been both of them getting a little too comfortable all curled up together in bed in the aftermath of it and falling asleep for three hours.

Which, ultimately, equaled them pulling an all-nighter tonight, much to Light's chagrin.

Incidentally, it probably wasn't just the 5:30pm sex that had clocked the pair of them out; Light had been kept awake until 4am the previous night and L hadn't slept at all, both of which overlapped and miraculously didn't involve more sex.

Apparently even _L_ got bored sometimes and messed about on the _Where's Wally?_ game that was magically and coincidentally pre-loaded onto his hard-drive, completing each 'Solve the Mystery' level so quickly that Light didn't see how it could _possibly_ be entertaining him, but he seemed amused enough not to bother Light.

Which seemed like a _good_ thing but for the actuality that Light couldn't sleep, due to: a.) the fact that L had apparently never heard of either headphones or lowering the volume on his laptop, so that all Light could hear echoing incessantly about the room were stupid cartoon sound effects and various characters exclaiming things in English that was anything but standard; and b.) the very notion that the world-famous mighty genius detective L was playing a _Where's Wally?_ computer game.

Either way, Light knew he was going to be an utter sleep-walking disaster tomorrow; hoping that L might get bored again and play _Where's Wally?_ so that he could sneakily curl up and sleep while the detective was distracted by the bright colors and English accents.

L blinked up at him over his steaming coffee after he'd finished poisoning it with sugar.

"You seem distracted, Light-kun," he said, sipping at it. "Are you alright?"

Light nodded absently, swirling his own coffee – unsweetened, but not black – around the cup.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

L had phased back to his usual oddly pleasant deadpan routine, and Light was glad he wasn't holding a grudge because of earlier; though honestly, this sort of unspoken truce wasn't uncommon. Banging Light while he was angry at him seemed to mellow L out quite a bit, though he was always rougher – Light endured without complaint, knowing it would probably get him off the hook in the long run.

He wasn't as easy to manipulate as Misa, not by a long-shot, but there were ways to bend L too, Light had found. His little quirks made him predictable in his actions, at least those concerning the private life he'd carved out with Light. Each had allowed the other to tame him, so that they weren't as wary of each other anymore, and consequently it was easier to anticipate and adapt to the subtle shifts between them.

Somewhere along the line, the dance had changed. What had once been a cagey standoff, full of jerky movements and leaden suspicions, was a now a fluid interchange of signals and motion, unhindered by their former discomfort of the stage and the situation.

"Are you sure?" L pressed, roping Light back in. "We have a lot of work to do tonight. I wouldn't like for you to be distracted."

Light gave a shrug.

"I… I guess I was just thinking… about those heirs you have." He sipped at his coffee, already knowing L's next question.

"What about them?"

"They're… just kids, right?"

"At the moment, yes."

"They probably wouldn't immediately succeed you, then. If-If you were to… die, I mean."

"No, probably not," L agreed expressionlessly. "That is why I asked you if _you_ would be L, if anything were to happen to me. Providing you aren't Kira, of course."

"And I _will_, I promise you, it's just…" Light examined the kitchen table for a moment or two, gathering his thoughts on the ethics of the situation. "I know it's none of my business, but… it just seems unfair to drag kids into this."

"Light-kun, regardless of _who_ Kira is, it is likely that I will die pursuing them. There _have_ to be others waiting in the wings to take my place. That's just how it is."

Light looked up at him.

"You shouldn't talk like that," he said.

"On the contrary, I am as confident as I _can_ be, but the dance goes on, doesn't it?"

L even smiled a little; a smile that only bewildered Light further.

"Kira won't stop, even if _I_ do."

* * *

'_Dance, dance, we're falling apart to halftime;_

_Dance, dance, and these are the lives_

_You'd love to lead;_

_Dance, this is the way they'd love if they knew_

_How misery loved me…'_

- Fallout Boy, _Dance Dance _

* * *

Years later, when the fairyland had lost its meaning and rotted to the ground, leaving Light Yagami with a nameless graveyard cross as his only memento of its existence – that fairyland replaced with a new land of his own choosing, one that swapped out passion for apathy, metaphors for definitions, and fairytales for obedient silence. It was a land in which Kira had not stopped even though L had – and he still remembered the dance with L.

The dance in which the music and the steps had changed without either of them realizing it.

The dance which had not stopped even when L collapsed in his arms, unable to match him step-for-step any longer.

It was there and then, when he'd thought the music was over and he was to take his bow, that he'd realized that though L had used it only as an anecdote – not that they'd really been _dancing_; Light didn't dance and L was completely graceless – it was true:

The dance wasn't over.

Not when Mello and Near had been trained in those very same steps.

It was as though the thick velvet curtain had been suddenly drawn back, to reveal upon the stage several others whom Light was sure hadn't been there before, following a dance that was hauntingly, _achingly_ familiar, and yet completely detached from his personal experience. Though maybe he'd simply been too absorbed in dancing his _pas de deux_ with L to notice them before; maybe they'd been there all along, but Light and L's twisted ballet had been too overwhelming for them to warrant being noticeable.

_Theirs_, drenched in beauty and pain and the blood of forbidden desire and _poison_; most importantly poison, since their ballet was a violent one, constituting of striking one another down before helping each other up, to go again for another round that only destroyed them further with each repetition.

_Theirs_, the shadow of every step they took dredging forth roses and poison apples and spinning wheels and broken mirror shards; love and lust and lies and notebooks that tore them apart as well as the chain that held them together.

_Theirs_, in which the black grace of their duel was beheld in the mirror of L's eye.

But then L was lost to him, by his own hand, and there he stood alone on a large empty stage with the spotlight still glaring him on, the world waiting to see his next solo movement; Misa, Ryuk, even Rem… They'd been participants, but he'd never danced with them, not as he had danced with L. He couldn't match the beauty and devastation of their duet by himself, and every following routine felt gray and washed out.

And when the curtain was drawn back even further, he found that he was not alone on that stage after all; that in L's place, vying to be Kira's new partner in the dance that would grind one or the other into defeat, were Mello and Near, dragged into this despite everything.

Mello, Near, and a new chorus line; Misa, Mikami, Takada, marionettes, really – dancers with strings for Light to manipulate, shaping their every motion to his exact will.

But it was his unpredictability that had made L a more satisfactory dance partner – a single step out of place, and Light was forced to follow, to try and correct the gap in their tightly-interwoven ballet.

Mello and Near… yes, he found himself challenged again to keep up – they weren't L, but they knew his moves, they knew how to dance Light into a corner with their contrasting yet simultaneously complimentary methods, though it was hardly the _Swan Lake_ it had been with L.

Hardly the intimately miserable step-for-step affair it had been with _L_, fraught with vows of love and acts of betrayal and untimely deaths, such a pretty little ballet their story had made…

Misery had loved them as much as they'd loved each other.

As for those _dying_ to follow in L's footsteps, Mello copied him move for move, bowing out of the dance in exactly the same way; _death by heart attack, don't wait up, my love…_

When the final curtain went up, the stage was still crowded, but Light had eyes for no-one but Near; it was remarkable how much he was like L, really – an inverted version, though white looked so wrong, it should have _black_…

It was inevitable that Light would stumble eventually; that he be out-danced after all this time under the scrutinizing spotlight, having wasted as many partners as he had pens – so when he finally fell exhausted at Near's feet, he knew the dance was finally over.

Surely, after all this time, the _danse macabre_ was over.

* * *

'_One night, and one more time;_

_Thanks for the memories,_

_Even though they weren't so great…'_

- Fallout Boy, _Thnks Fr Th Mmrs_

_Perhaps he'd been a fool to expect that their fairyland would burst forth from the ground again at touch of their lips; that their enchanted forest of thorns would crack from the earth and entwine itself around them as it had once before when he wrapped his arms around L; that the mirror would manifest itself in L's dark eyes once more when he stood, taking the dead detective up with him, and then sank onto the bedsheets with him…_

_(Should have known it would end up this way, this is how the dance always went, wasn't it, my dark-eyed beauty…?)_

_L didn't react to him at all; didn't fight, didn't fall into it, just let Light put him onto his back and simply lay there unmoving like…_

…_a corpse…_

"_Hey," Light said, breaking the kiss. "What's the matter with you?"_

_L shrugged – indicating, if nothing else, that he hadn't actually ceased to be, even if he technically could not be classified as "alive"._

"_You don't want this," Light went on softly, a mixture of trepidation and reluctance tinting the question with melancholy shades of regret. Something he couldn't shake. _

_L shrugged again impassively. _

"_I don't care," he said blankly, both affirming and contradicting Light's dueling apprehensions. "I don't care what you do. This body means nothing to me. You can do whatever you want."_

"_How can you not care?" Light asked him softly, seeking understanding in the face of uncompromising harshness. _

"_I don't belong here. Destroy my body if you want." He glanced up at Light, empty eyes not reflecting him, but cutting instead. "I know, though. This torments you. You may have killed me, but you missed me. You dreamed about having me back like this. It's too much for you, really, isn't it? You wish now for things to be the way they were, all those years ago." He looked away again. "You are welcome to try, Light-kun. I will not stop you."_

"_I know… it's too much to ask you to love me," Light whispered, "but…"_

"_You have no answer," L said, when Light trailed off. "No. please. There is no answer to give. Don't try to concoct one. Do what you want, Light-kun. I know what you want, and though I do not think it will bring you much happiness, it is not my place to stop you. There is a better question, after all. __**Can**__ you walk away from me?"_

"_I don't… I don't understand…"_

"_I know. I didn't expect you to answer it."_

_Exhausted and bewildered, Light sank down on top of L, resting his cheek on his chest; immediately feeling how icily cold his skin was even through the fabric of his top, as though he truly __**was**__ a corpse… _

_A far cry from the warm, alive version he'd held in his arms so many times – the version who'd cared enough about __**everything**__ Light did that he'd question it, no matter how trivial it was._

_Light kissed him again, knowing the old L would have pushed upwards into it, taking command – or at least attempting to, but…_

_The new one didn't; he merely stared up at the ceiling, making Light only more determined still to steal his old L back, despite the implicit feeling of kissing marble that came with pressing his lips to L's. He ignored the chill, the unimpressed expression, and the dead eyes that continued to follow him despite their defunct state. _

_Instead he focused on the physical fragments constituting L's character, which could trick his senses into believing the thing before him was the real living thing. _

_Such as the raven silk strands of hair, untouched by the ice. The plain cotton weave of white, contrasting against the thicker darker denim. The rich baritone voice vibrating mellifluously through the air…_

_But no matter what he tried forcing his mind into believing, the most important sensory details that made intimacy possible were either missing, or completely opposed to his preconceptions. There was no warmth, no husky smell of arousal, no faint sweetness lingering in his mouth or salt sprinkled lightly on his skin, no hard-pressing seeking flesh to match his own… _

_And most damning of all, there was no passion present anywhere in the man. He wasn't returning the sensual stares, or the fleeting touches, or the murmurs of longing over the years of absence; he simply lay there completely unmoving and unblinking. Aware of what was happening, but entirely removed from the situation. _

_Light honestly felt that he was trying to arouse, and become aroused by, a corpse; and only L's moving eyes dispelled the idea. Yet, he didn't know which was worse – trying to have sex with an unseeing corpse, or trying to have sex with a being that could watch him so passionlessly. _

_Eventually, seeing no other appealing options, Light simply went straight for his own gratification. And despite L claiming that he wouldn't stop him, on trying to remove his top, L had pushed Light violently away, biting out that he was not to undress him – much the way he had earlier._

_And though he hadn't protested at Light merely unzipping him and pulling down his jeans a little, he was still uncomfortably cold to the touch; in fact, Light was glad he hadn't completely undressed him, given that even laying a hand on him through denim or cotton made him draw his hand away again in a numbing chill._

_It was nothing, however, compared to entering him._

_Light had thought it might have been better inside L, the detective perhaps maintaining some internal warmth even through death. But to call him "freezing" wasn't an apt description; the sensation of it tore Light's breath from his lungs, leaving him gasping – wide-eyed and shuddering in the icy clamp. _

_L glanced lazily up at him, his face completely blank. He said nothing, and after a moment looked away again, utterly disinterested as Light's face became a pained, confused contortion. _

_It hadn't been just uncomfortable, or awkward, it had __**hurt**__, and Light hadn't known how to deal with the racking sensation when all he was used to was feeling warm pulsing pleasure. _

_In any case, it was only pride that made him keep going, though he flagged considerably at the sensation of it; he would have stopped immediately if it wasn't for his desperation to get a reaction from L. Instead he grit his teeth, clenched his eyes shut, and began thrusting blindly into the unmoving body beneath him, all the while struggling to hold back the pained gasps that threatened to leak out with each rending movement; it felt like he was tearing himself on the frigid walls and he kept expecting to see blood. _

_L didn't react to it at all, just lying there on his back examining the ceiling while Light exhaustedly pounded at him…_

_He could feel himself growing faint, as his vision starting to patch with black, but it wasn't from nearing completion; in truth he was only reaching a higher, more acute plateau of emotional and physical pain, and he could suddenly feel tears spill over without him even knowing he was crying. __**This**__ was probably why the bastard hadn't cared, because he'd known that Light wouldn't get a kick out of it, known it would break him, if he'd just said something—_

_But then, there'd always been these nasty little secrets between them, right?_

_These were the things that had poisoned them the first time around; secrets like these._

_Secrets that could have ended the dance a whole lot earlier. _

* * *

"Now where are you going?" Light asked softly; he struggled to sit up in bed, clutching tightly at the sheets.

He was still breathless from the ordeal, despite having practically collapsed after forcing himself to give up; shivering violently, and maybe he'd feel better if he'd put his clothes back on instead of vainly curling up naked underneath the bedclothes, but he was honestly too cold and battered even to do _that_…

L paused at the door, looking over his shoulder at him.

"You want me to lie in your arms the way I used to?" He asked by way of reply, his voice emotionless. "Didn't you learn that things are different now, Light-kun? I may have been returned to you, but it's not the same as it was. It never _will_ be."

"I know things… are different…" Light looked at the empty side of the bed – devoid of both Misa _and_ L. "Misa… I don't know where…"

_(Keep dancing? Without you, Misa…?)_

"Yes. Things are different." L opened the bedroom door. "Yet still the dance must go on, isn't that right, Light-kun?…"

He left, closing the door behind him; leaving Light staring after him, his skin alight with icy pinpricks and his auburn hair disheveled and the hand clutching the sheets to his chest aching with how tightly he held them – absolutely _devastated_.

The only heat left in his body now was in his eyes, which stung a little from the fresh tears which had started to slide down his pretty face again against his will.

_(Kira cries…?)_

Yes, for he still had the clear memory of what they had been, had the dream of what they might have been and was left with the husk of the only thing they had left. The tragic ballet that was theirs had started up again; and Mello and Near were out there somewhere too, somewhere on that stage that seemed to belong to only they two in that bloody _pas de deux_ that refused to be silenced and ceased, even beyond the grave.

The dance and the music had changed again, but it wasn't over.

Maybe it was never going to be over, as long as there was a Light Yagami and a Death Note in his hand.

_The music is still going, so keep dancing—_

_Keep dancing. _

* * *

**Narroch: **Light will not be in this funk for long, so no worries there. This story isn't going to spiral into some pity party 'cause he killed his love. But neither can we so glibly ignore it, since it was such an integral part of his life. Hopefully they are not too unforgivably OOC, seeing as what they went through. Things will become more clear as we progress.

**RobinRocks: **A few interesting things:

ONE: This chapter included three song excerpts (including a Fallout Boy double-bill), none of which were from the song from which this chapter takes its title – _Ballroom Blitz_ by The Sweet.

TWO: _Thnks Fr Th Mmrs_ is my Official Matt Song™. :) Don't ask me why. It just reminds me of him – I hear it and immediately think "MATT!!1111!!". It's an odd thing… There's no real _reason_ for it. Perhaps I have just been programmed or something to think "Matt" in response to it… And now you will _all_ be reminded of Matt now too, when you hear it. :)

THREE: To drag you all back into the _Princess Tutu_ discussion, the first lyrics, _Fairyland_, are from a really beautiful _Princess Tutu _AMV – and so, as a Valentine's Day gift, I have supplied to link to it on my profile (and also a link to another _Princess Tutu _vid, _Hall Om Mig Nu_, which is awesome and has won awards and stuff… It's quite a famous one – thankyou, Narroch and AutumnDynasty, for finding them…). You _know_ you wanna go click on them…

There is also another piece of fan-art for _Poison Apple_ by **unsolvedenigma**, a link to which is supplied!

**Narroch: **Plot-wise, this chapter was a lil sketchy, not to mention short. So as a special gift, we will be having a much faster update than normal. Less time to wait to get to the action!

**RobinRocks:** And _in_ that phenomenally-quickly-updated chapter…

…We _finally_ come to MNM! Yay!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! Reviews are appreciated more than crappy cards (and yes, even chocolate!)!!111!1eleven!

- RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx

P.S: Before anyone gets up in arms… In Britain, it is called _Where's __Wally_, NOT _Where's __Waldo_. And incidentally, it is originally a British concept, so therefore "Wally" is correct – I don't know who decided to change it to "Waldo" in America or why, and Narroch, I don't care _how_ much better you think "Waldo" sounds…

* * *


	16. Hydra

**RobinRocks: **Well, a quick update, as promised – though it is like 3:30am here in Britain as I post this because Narroch _does_ keep deadlines… but _really_ milks them for all they're bloody worth.

**Narroch: **OMG! So fast! And on yet ANOTHER momentous occasion!

**RobinRocks: **And that momentous occasion being that today, February 19th 2008, is the OFFICIAL RELEASE DATE for _Death Note: Another Note_. I know many of you have probably read it already, either online or a book that you bought from a bookstore that started selling them early, BUT… today is the official day. Unfortunately I have to wait ages for mine since I ordered it from AmazonCOM and it has to ship from the USA to the UK, and then I had it sent to my house and I am at university so I can't get it until I get home so my brother will get his grubby mitts on it first… Though it will probably bore him because the only _Death Note_ character he actually likes is Ryuk, so ha ha…

But yay! Beyond Birthday!

In other news: There is more _Poison Apple_ fanart! But more about that down at the bottom!

It also seems that I'm not alone in the Wally/Waldo argument. :) The cartoon show may have been American but it was even completely redubbed with the same voice actors as _Where's Wally?_ for British audiences, so suck on _that_!

Nyah ha ha, between _Where's Wally?_ and Twenty-Ones, you guys have been British-ified!

**Narroch: **Once again, our usual ritual of throwing ourselves at you feet in gratitude for all the reviews! You peeps are wonderful!

Thankyou to: **Phoenix of Hell, Lawliet's Angel, queencasey, antiheroine, Tanka, nyantea, Trin, isis chanra wu, tsuki aoi usagi, DoYouFindMeDreadful, imfromjupiter, silvereyesish, CanIInterestYouInThisLifeofMin, Elegant Arrow 64, Ashinan, Kaiji, Stargirl7, coatcheckdream, Tobi Tortue, mornir-brightflame, Silent Dagger, Mask of Mirage, Tamouri, Aria, Jenna, Reese Craven, Caeru, blueeyedchibi, Santri, Kura101, Aliviania, Addictedreader09, Bloodshot Eyes, hittocerebattosai, BakayaroManiac, Nilahxapiel, Pahoyhoy, Vandervort, **and** Lottypotty!**

And so to our first chapter with the lovely trio of Mello, Matt and Near!

Hydra

"Weird, huh?" The question drifted carelessly to the floor, joining all the other piles of debris scattered throughout the small apartment in various stages of unpacking. Unceremoniously tearing the silver wrapping off the bar of chocolate clutched in his fingers, Mello shot a glance over his shoulder at Matt, who was dragging a huge box across the bedroom floor, completely oblivious to the rhetorical icebreaker. "Matt?"

"What?" Matt glanced up, unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth.

"I said weird."

"What is?"

With an irritable sigh, Mello looked away, tapping the glass of the window behind him with his leather-clad knuckle.

"This." He murmured, the word sounding remarkably like a growl as he simultaneously bit off a square of chocolate with a decisive _snap_. "Here. LA. With you."

"Heh." Matt smirked, lifting the cardboard box and dumping it on the bed in a heap of neatly bundled cords and connectors. "I dunno. I was getting sick of Wammy's."

"Miss me?" Mello angled his head so that blonde hair curtained over one eye.

"You know it." Matt sank onto the edge of the bed, taking a lighter from his pocket and finally lighting up the idle cigarette; the brief flame made the deep red of his hair strikingly apparent in the darkened room, doing more justice to the sienna locks than cheap fluorescent ever could. "It was so boring there after you left."

He glanced up; the fresh smoke which had laced his words now spiraled lazily up past his head, as the shallow glow from the ceiling light glinted reflectively on the lenses of the goggles hanging around his neck.

"I mean, Near… you know… Not very outgoing. He was really the only one left close to my age once you were gone, and you know he never wanted to hang out with me." Matt gave an offish shrug and leaned back, propping himself up on the bed. "I sort of figured, you know, since he likes games he'd play some Nintendo with me or whatever, but no. He just used to close the door in my face, say he was busy."

Mello snorted, able to picture the scene flawlessly in his head.

"And that surprised you."

"Hn, suppose not." Matt lay back completely, sprawling horizontally across the only space not occupied by cords on the double mattress. "The point is I missed you. Of course I missed you." A pointed look accompanied the unspoken question, just enough to nudge a response from Mello's stunted sense of obligation.

"I couldn't keep in contact with you. You know that," Mello sniffed out, lifting his head to stare down his nose at the redhead; who had already seemingly dismissed the explanation as mere convenience.

"Right. What was it, the Mafia?" Matt critically examined the cigarette perched between two fingers, a slightly haughty tone coloring his caution. "I have to say, Mello, that was a pretty dangerous move, even for you."

"Yeah, well…" Mello didn't look at him, instead glancing at the soft creases lining his gloves. "We both know how well _that_ turned out…"

Matt gave a half-incredulous snort of his own, enjoying the warm rush of smoke past his nostrils.

"Probably for the best, you know," he reasoned flatly. "How were those idiots going to help you get any closer to Kira, anyway? You're better off this way, just you and me out to get him."

"Yeah?" Mello smirked. "And you don't just say that because there's more than one reason you missed me?"

Matt sat up a little, one eyebrow quirked in undisguised interest.

"You know," he said slowly, flicking a little ash onto the carpet, "I reckon Roger knew about that."

Mello rolled his eyes.

"Matt, he _heard_ us."

Matt smirked impishly, not at all embarrassed by the disclosure.

"He did?"

Mello gave a nod.

"It was before L died. Roger called me into his office this one time and said to cut it out, mostly because your bedroom was next door to the seven-year-olds' dorm rather than because we were underage."

Matt laughed, the sound reverberating off of the plain walls like a clear ringing bell.

"Seriously? You never told me that."

Mello shrugged dismissively.

"What was the point? We _didn't_ stop. We just did it in my room instead, and I never heard Near complaining."

"Well…" Matt gazed intently at the twirled fronds of smoke in front of him as the warm recollection filled his mind. "…Yeah, there was that too. Of _course_ I fucking missed you, Mello."

Mello turned to look at him properly; his outline stark against the dark window, outside of which sprawled the hazy glimmering spider web matrix of Los Angeles, turning the sky a murky green from the light pollution.

The apartment wasn't very big – kind of crummy, really – and it probably wasn't the best Mello could afford, not given the money he'd managed to accumulate since storming out of Wammy's House three years ago; but Mello had other things to spend his money on, things that mattered more to him than a bathroom in which the light didn't keep blowing itself out, and the water didn't run with rusted silt from the old pipes.

The leather, or the guns, or that bike of his, or all the damn chocolate.

The rewards that had made it worthwhile to pursue an unknown future in an unknown country. Though, much more likely, they were just the embellishments that came along with his new self-proclaimed role, and his true goal had remained the same as it ever was…

Matt didn't know how long Mello had been here. He'd been in Los Angeles for over two years, though Matt knew he'd been in London before America, going from Winchester to England's capital for a while. Maybe he'd made his first Mafia connections there, in one of the smaller "branches" of it, because he'd gone to Los Angeles soon after, and that was when Matt had lost contact with him.

All in all, getting involved with the Mafia had been a mistake on Mello's part. Matt didn't know all the details, there were things Mello wouldn't part with, even to him, but he did know what Mello's intentions had been – use the Mafia as a stepping stone to get closer to unraveling the Kira case left unsolved by L's death. It hadn't worked out like that, was all Matt could conclude. Sure, Mello had gotten in, raised a few ranks, but most likely he'd tried to jump the shark too quickly, said a thing or two out of line…

When all was said and done, Mello was, even now, only nineteen years old; and the Mafia was a nepotistic old group with deep roots, valuing years of experience and continuous loyalty in a set hierarchy. Mello was simply too volatile and impatient to invest his entire life into the group. And that was what the Mafia demanded; membership for life.

It was dangerous to get involved with the mob, but even more dangerous to get _uninvolved_. It truly was a feat of Mello's sharp intelligence and fierce determination that he was still alive after cutting ties with the most notorious gang in the world…

Lucky he wasn't wearing cement shoes at the bottom of the South Bay.

The point was, he wasn't dead, and after getting out of the Mafia he'd gotten back in contact with Matt at Wammy's House.

Matt was eighteen now, just a little younger than Mello, and though it had never crossed his mind to go storming out of Wammy's the way Mello had the very day Roger had told him L had been killed, he'd been old enough to leave anyway at this point, so he'd come to LA after that long-time-no-see phone call.

Joined at the hip (_or hips_) with Mello once again, it seemed.

That had been a few weeks ago. They'd been hopping about from hotel to hotel in that space of time, before finally coming here – to this apartment. Matt didn't know whether Mello had bought it a while back or simply had pre-paid extended rent on it; either way, it looked like this shabby hole was going to be their base. But as long as he had a sufficient power supply and a high speed internet connection, he could be happy anywhere, and especially now that he was with Mello again; hell, he'd even settle for an _average_ internet connection if it meant being able to stay with the pugnacious blonde.

"It's time to get serious about this Kira thing," Mello had said to him, leaving Matt to wonder inwardly if the whole Mafia thing had really been such a joke, but even so, it seemed that this was how it was going to be now.

He and Mello, out and up against the bastard who'd killed L.

It was natural, really – he and Mello had always been inseparable back at Wammy's House, best friends from almost the moment they met due to a rapport formed over a love of tormenting Near; and later, when they'd gotten a little older and hit puberty and started to feel new things, they merely projected those new feelings onto one another rather than bothering to try and persuade one of the many female Wammy's residents who severely despised the devious duo, due to their mile-long record of pranks and launching of various projectiles down the orphanage corridors.

For the record, Matt suspected Mello had probably slept with women by now, having been in the Mafia, but he himself had never been anyone's but the blonde's.

Matt didn't hold that against him – but hell, he'd missed Mello during those three years apart. So now, pulled back together again, they had something more in common than plotting how to fill all the moveable joints of Near's toys with glue, namely being the second and third of L's heirs, being so in case something like death should befall the real L…

…Which it had.

So it was natural that they'd be together like this – Mello's intuitiveness and ability to act, coupled with Matt's technological expertise, fused into one to catch Kira before Near did.

Mello had always vowed he'd never share the "L" title with Near. Whichever of them was better would be crowned with it, but he'd never compromise.

"Matt? Hey, _Matt_!"

Matt blinked and looked up at Mello, still over by the window; arms folded, chocolate half-devoured, blonde hair pristine, dressed in black jeans and a half-open black button-down shirt. The rosary he always wore was threaded about his neck, tucked beneath the collar of his shirt, the silver crucifix glinting in the moonlight.

"What?"

"You drifted off." Mello waved vaguely around the room. "What's _with_ all these boxes, anyway?"

"Huh? Oh, just my stuff. I couldn't bring all my equipment over on the plane, so I got Roger to send it on afterwards."

Mello ran his gaze over the multitude of boxes that were creating a mountain line in the room.

"Jeez, that must have cost a bomb, sending all these over from England…"

Matt shrugged, unconcerned.

"Hey, he paid for it, so whatever."

Mello smirked, biting at his chocolate again; and Matt got up and came away from the bed to join him at the window.

"You have any idea where we're going to start?" He asked, looking out at Downtown LA rather than Mello; upon which the electric glow of the city had a rather haunting effect, bleaching his pale face and gold hair almost green.

"Before L died, he set up a system that would forward all of his notes to the Wammy's mainframe system in the event that he didn't log onto it for the period of a week, meaning that both he and Watari were dead," Mello replied expressionlessly, licking at a large chunk of chocolate he had broken off. "Unfortunately, a lot of the files on L's computer were wiped. I'm not sure why, or who did it, whether it was deliberate or not, but what was sent to Roger were only fragments, and the only reason we got even _those _was because they had been encoded into the computer's operating files. Both Near and I received them as a locked email attachment." He glanced at Matt. "It's not much, but it's a start."

Matt gave a meditative nod.

"Heh, for all we know," he said, nodding down at the city below, "Kira could be out _there_."

"I doubt it." Mello glanced at Matt, their gazes meeting. "I have very little information, but as far as I can tell, L apprehended Kira suspects in Japan in 2004. There's no information on the suspects, though. I think it was wiped off."

"Huh. Who would delete important stuff like that?"

"Well, I'm not sure if it was deliberate or an accident or maybe even just a glitch in the computer system that removed the information itself."

"If it was deliberate," Matt said slowly, "then maybe those who were incarcerated by L were the ones to do it."

"That's what I thought too," Mello agreed blandly, "in which case the suspects, or at least _one_ of them, had access to L's computer."

"Someone… _close_ to him?"

Mello gave a silent nod.

"Trouble is, there's no record of who L worked with on that case," he said.

"The Japanese police, wasn't it?" Matt answered. "I'm sure that's what he told us."

Mello gave a tired shrug, indicating he had already thought over the idea numerous times and yet had no way to directly verify it.

"Matt, we were kids when he was working on that case. You _know_ anything he told us wasn't important. He couldn't afford to leak information like that, even to us. Besides, even if he _did_ work with the Japanese police – or even a select few from the force – that's no way of pinpointing exactly _who_. For all we know, they were all killed by Kira too."

"I guess so." Matt glanced around at the teetering pyramids of boxes, thinking of the huge task that lay ahead in opening all of them. "Maybe I should just leave all this stuff boxed up, if it looks like we'll be heading to Japan sometime soon."

Mello shrugged again.

"I don't know. It's possible we can work effectively from here. I know L at least _started_ his investigation while he was in England…"

Mello trailed off, falling silent; and after a moment, Matt gave him a playful punch on the arm, making him glance irritably at him.

"Hey, don't worry, okay?" Matt grinned. "We'll get the sucker."

"I know, it just… pisses me off." Mello toyed absently with the tiny cross suspended from the end of his rosary. "He killed all those people, he killed _L_, and he's _still_ out there, killing people—"

"Yeah, well, we know _how_, don't we?" Matt interrupted softly. "He uses that notebook."

"The Death Note." Mello gave a sigh, putting the last square of chocolate onto his tongue; his gaze on Matt. "That's my real plan, you know. I want that notebook, Matt. It's the only way we're going to catch the fucker."

"It's in police custody though, isn't it?"

"But it was in L's custody before that, and _we're_ his heirs." Mello crumpled the paper of his devoured chocolate in a clenched fist. "It's Kira's killing tool, Matt. It has to be the key to this case. If nothing else, the most suspicious thing about it is that L got hold of it, and within a week he was dead. That much I know. He got too close, Matt – he got too close, and Kira knew, so he killed him."

Matt gave an attentive nod.

"Then we'll get it. Dunno how or when, but we'll get it."

He took a long drag on his cigarette, finishing it and then stubbing it out on the windowsill.

"Since when do you smoke, anyway?" Mello asked absently, glancing at the small black scorch mark now melted into the off-white paint. "You didn't smoke before."

"No. I started… eh, don't remember. A few years back." Matt stretched, striped jersey rising up a little. "Well, I'm gonna go set up my server to the network. Can't start a murder investigation without a working server operating system…" he said playfully, somehow expecting Mello to know what he was talking about.

"Okay." Mello supplied tonelessly, indicating his complete lack of interest. He began to turn back to stare broodily out the window again, but Matt caught his elbow, making him look back at him; the redhead leaned forward kissing him softly, almost reverently, on the mouth.

"You don't know how good it feels to be back with you, Mello," he muttered on breaking the chaste kiss, smirking at the blonde, his eyes warm with contentment.

Mello stared back, his gaze decidedly more cynical, and then shoved him roughly in the shoulder.

"Shut up, Matt. Go plug in your stupid computer."

Smirk unfaltering, Matt sauntered off. Same old Mello – he had no use at all for sentimental values or heartfelt words, though he _did_ love Matt, he just had other ways of showing it.

Incidentally, as Matt shut the adjoining door to leave Mello alone at the window of the dark bedroom – locating the correct box and tearing off the packing tape – he mused to himself that he could in fact recall _exactly_ when he'd started smoking.

He'd started a week after Mello had left; trading one vice for another.

* * *

Roger was normally a self secured man. He was firm with rude and naughty children; tender with lonely and scared children. He commanded respect and obedience from even the most rebellious of his charges, and he always got it. Being the head of an extended family of orphans had taught him the precise balance of firmness and kindness necessary to deal with most children, despite having none of his own. Yet, when dealing with his special cases, such normal parenting approaches never worked.

If he took such a chiding condescending tone with Near, or Mello, or even Matt, they would have none of it. When one had an I.Q. above the average adult, even the most juvenile genius would not tolerate being treated like a mere child. Such certainty and maturity had unsettled him when they were small, being able to speak on par with leading scientists about quantum mechanics and the resulting theories of relativity; all the while sporting missing teeth and fingers still slightly chubby with baby fat. He had learned to accommodate their intellect, and accept their natural aptitude at everything they attempted; it had become increasingly easier to ignore their developmental leaps as they grew older, and eventually grew up.

But sometimes, even now, Roger glanced at Near and felt a shiver slide down his spine; because when Near's gaze met with his, it was almost as though he could read his thoughts, almost as if L, beyond the confines of his grave, had possessed him.

The obsidian orbs, so dark, stained with some secret color from the deep end of the ebony spectrum, those that reflected the truth of anyone who would either care or dare to look hard enough into them, were no-one's if they were not L's.

Roger hadn't known L all that well; at least not the way he knew Mello and Matt and Near. L had left Wammy's when he was fourteen – younger even than Mello, though he hadn't left alone. Watari had gone with him, leaving the orphanage in Roger's charge. Before that, Roger had been only an assistant in running the place, with mixed tasks ranging from paperwork to being something of a social worker for any children who had problems or wanted someone to talk to.

Not that L had ever come anywhere near his office.

He'd been at that job for a few years prior to Watari's leaving – perhaps L had been around ten or eleven the first time Roger had ever seen him; a very small, skinny child who rarely smiled and preferred his own company, with wild hair and dark, dissecting eyes.

In almost every respect, Near was a mirror image of him; even down to the way in which L had never really changed from childhood to adulthood. He'd looked much the same at fourteen as he had at eleven, and the _last_ time Roger had seen him – he'd been twenty-four, or twenty-three, at the very least – he still looked almost exactly the same, just much taller.

The eyes had never changed.

It had always unnerved Roger, even on first seeing Near, how much he looked like L; especially when it was beyond a doubt that they were not in any way related. The only thing they really had in common was that they were orphans, yet for those black-as-black magic mirror eyes to occur in first one genius child, and then another…?

It hadn't bothered Roger so much when L had been alive, despite his absence from Wammy's; but the moment he'd gotten that text message, the one reading in stark unapologetic letters "L is dead", he had dreaded looking upon Near again.

Maybe Near knew that, since he didn't go out of his way to make eye-contact with Roger, even when the elderly man was talking to him; something that, in normal circumstances, with normal children, Roger would not tolerate.

Since L's death, it seemed only as though L's spirit had relocated itself, taking over Near's body instead; of course it wasn't true, for such a practical man, his imagination could be overwhelming at times. It wasn't really as though Near had _changed_ since L had died, he'd always had those same mirror-mirror eyes, but it was just…

It seemed to matter more now that the one who'd had those eyes originally was gone.

As it happened, Near's gaze at this precise moment was mercifully fixated upon the floor of Roger's office, and although Roger knew that he was listening, he made no request for Near to look at him.

"I'm not suggesting that you leave Wammy's House, Near," he said slowly. "At any rate, you still legally have a year left here, being only seventeen."

"Mello left before then," Near said, not looking up. "So did L."

"I know, and you can leave too, if you want. But you _do_ still have another year here, if you choose to stay." Roger cleared his throat. "I really only called you in here to discuss your options as far as the Kira investigation go. L never did choose which of you would be the one to succeed him, but it's fair to say, especially with Mello's prolonged absence, that you were first in line for his title."

Near shrugged, glancing up curiously at Roger through his white-as-snow hair.

"So… I suppose it's inevitable that you will be investigating Kira in L's place…?" Roger went on tentatively.

"Mello is probably doing that too," Near said expressionlessly, avoiding the question.

"Yes, well… This is my point. There were three of you chosen to succeed L's title in the event of his death – as of the past month, you are the only one left here at Wammy's House. Mello left three years ago and Matt left last month after Mello contacted him. I would think it is a fair presumption to make that they are now working together – most likely, as you said, on investigating Kira by their own devices."

Near began to toy with a strand of his white wavy hair, wrapping it around his forefinger.

"Yes, I suppose I will investigate Kira too," he said, answering Roger's earlier question. "Though I will not be leaving Wammy's House, at least not yet. I will work from here."

Roger gave a nod.

"Very well, Near. As you wish."

Near released the strand of hair he'd been tightly curling, finally looking up properly at Roger.

"Was that all, Roger?"

Roger gave a nod.

"Yes, I suppose so."

Near gave an absent nod of his own, getting down off his chair and leaving the room – he even had an odd way of sitting, one leg always pressed tightly to his chest, and the way he cautiously got down only reminded Roger of the way L had used to crouch when presented with a chair.

Roger had made a point of watching L once, just out of interest – the detective-to-be had been about thirteen, wearing a black long-sleeved top about four sizes too big for him, and was perched reading a book, holding it in his odd manner.

Roger recalled this particular incident because L had _known_ he was watching him, and after reading without qualm for a while, had turned his head towards the elderly man, tilting it a little and blinking those huge dark eyes at him.

Eventually, wordlessly, L had closed his book and hopped down off his chair, coming over to Roger and holding the book out.

"Here," he'd said; and when Roger had taken it, baffled by his behavior despite how eccentric he knew the teenager was, L had gone on; "I marked my favorite one, if you want to read it."

He'd sauntered off, pulling a chocolate bar out of his back pocket.

Roger had turned the book over, reading _Legends of Popular Greek Mythology_.

Well, that hadn't surprised him; despite L's unquestionable scientific, mathematic and logical intelligence, L at the age of around twelve to fourteen often read things like this. Roger had seen him reading the Old Testament and Grimm's Fairytales prior to this.

Roger still had that book in his office; he'd asked L if he wanted it back and the teenager had refused, saying Roger could keep it, having already memorized it himself, and though Roger had always been slightly wary of L, mostly because he was one of the only children he'd come across he simply couldn't unravel or understand, he _had_ kept it, even for all these years.

The _other_ child he couldn't understand – Near – closed the door; and after a moment in silence, Roger went into the drawer of his desk and pulled out the book L had given him. L had given him this fifteen years ago – recalling that, were L still alive, he would be twenty-eight by now – but it was much older than that. Roger didn't know where L had gotten it from, and he'd never asked him, but the inside cover said it had been printed in 1951 by Oxford University Press.

The marker for L's favorite tale – a neatly-folded crimson sweet-wrapper – was still in place, and Roger flicked forward now to that page.

_Hercules Defeats the Hydra_

In retrospect, given L's death, Roger always found it interesting and chilling in equal measure that the thirteen year old L's favorite of all Greek stories should be this one; a story featuring a monster which, when decapitated by Hercules' sword, grew three new heads in place of the original.

Maybe it was this story which had _influenced_ L to choose a third successor; he'd been presented with Mello and Near, agreeing them both worthy of succeeding his title, but then he'd chosen Matt as well, putting him as third in line unprompted by Watari or Roger.

For indeed, Kira killing L had really only made the situation worse for himself:

Destroy the original, and three more rise in its place.

* * *

Closing the door to his bedroom, Near stepped slowly across the floor, his shuffle and baggy pants giving him the illusion of floating, to where his half-finished jigsaw was spread on the carpet. He settled down again next to it, folding neatly into a segmented ball and then going back to it mechanically as though he had never been interrupted and called away.

He wasn't even really sure what it was a jigsaw _of_ – Near never looked at the picture beforehand, simply emptying out the pieces onto the floor and getting to work on it.

He didn't really _care_ what it was, either. Near wasn't fussy, he'd make jigsaws of anything – kittens, flowers, pastoral scenes, TV shows or movies. He never really thought about the completed picture at the end – he simply liked the process of it, the fitting together of pieces to create the full portion of information.

Near had started his own Kira investigation three years ago, after Mello had left Wammy's House. There was really only so much he could do without all the raw data of L's own case notes; like Mello, he had received the fragmented files from L's system and had used them to the fullest potential that he could.

Matt would probably have been able to get more out of them – perhaps they could be decrypted further, to release hidden information, Near wasn't sure of that, but he knew for a fact that Matt had not been sent the notes, so he kept them to himself.

Roger had said that the reason Matt didn't get the notes was because all three of Matt's computers were connected up to multiple networks and it was dangerous for such confidential data to be exposed to the amount of information highways Matt had running 24/7, which was a fact that Near couldn't argue with; though he suspected that the _real_ reason Matt had not been given L's fragmented notes was because Roger expected the techno whiz kid to run off at any given moment on Mello's beck and call, so he wouldn't _need_ his own copy of them.

Well, it might have taken three years for Mello to cast out his beck and call, but inevitably it _had_ happened, leaving Near as the only L-heir left at Wammy's House.

That didn't bother Near. He didn't dislike Mello as much as Mello seemed to dislike him, being really rather neutral towards both he and Matt, but he'd never really hung around with them. They didn't enjoy the same kinds of things, and Matt and Mello enjoyed each others' company immensely while Near vastly preferred his own.

He became even more disinterested in them when the metal headboard of Mello's bed began to bang against his wall on a nightly basis.

The only person who had _really_ ever interested Near was L, and though he had both seemed blasé about the detective's death and had yet to ever shed a tear over it, it _had_ hit him; very hard.

Near just didn't express emotion in the way that other people did. He had _never_ cried – never once in his life.

He didn't know if L had ever cried – certainly he had _seemed_ to be almost as emotionless as Near himself, giving Near an instant rapport with him, even as a child, but he hadn't really seen all that much of the detective. He was always so busy that his coming back to Wammy's House was a very rare and somewhat momentous occurrence.

They hadn't seen L for almost an entire year by the time Roger had called them to his office that November day back in 2004 to tell them that he was dead. He'd been here a few times at the beginning of the Kira investigation, but then he'd had to go to Japan, and they'd never seen him again.

Near stopped doing his jigsaw puzzle, getting to his feet and padding softly over to his bed; he lifted the mattress and slid out the thin piece of wood he kept there, pressed out of sight between the mattress and the frame beneath. Dropping the mattress back down, he picked up the board and carried it back over to his original spot, placing it down on top of his initial jigsaw.

It was a fairly large rectangle of thin chipboard, and glued down upon it was another jigsaw – he'd glued it down himself one evening to the wood so that he didn't have to worry about it getting messed up.

It was comprised of 1000 tiny pieces, all plain white – making it a virtually-impossible jigsaw for anyone who wasn't Near – but for six that made up a black capital 'L' tilted in the top left-hand corner.

However, to be precise, Near's "completed" puzzle was comprised of only 997 pieces.

There were three pieces missing – though the box had been sealed when L had given it to him the last time he'd seen him, and Near was much too careful to have ever lost even _one_ single piece of any of his jigsaw puzzles.

Whenever Near wanted to think afresh over this Kira business – the very same that had been the _death_ of L – he always hauled out this jigsaw and just stared at it; at the holes left in it by the missing pieces.

L had always been precise in exacting his methods, as though to set up puppets that would dance even without his manipulating of the strings, to be sure that they would be true to their purpose in taking up his crown.

Truly, it was as though he'd taken on the Kira case knowing that it would be the death of him – almost as though he _hoped_ it would be, not because he was suicidal, but because he knew he'd engineered the "What-If" scenario so precisely that there was no way for Kira to win even if he _did_ hack L's head off and hold it aloft to declare his victory over Justice itself.

As though he'd known, on that last visit to Wammy's House, the day before he'd boarded that final flight to Tokyo, Japan, that the last piece in this puzzle was not himself, but _Near_.

* * *

_Mello and Matt had been all over L that day; they always were, awed by his very presence, hanging off him and gabbling excitedly to him about the work they'd been doing or the new game Matt had gotten or the firecracker they'd put in the lemon meringue pie last Tuesday._

_Idly amused, L seemed happy enough to entertain them; though was intently aware of Near hanging around behind them in silence._

_Near never knew what to say to L, though really, he didn't want to __**talk**__ to him. He just liked his presence, and sometimes L went very quiet too, and if Mello and Matt weren't in the vicinity, they just sat in silence, the mute flow of thoughts able to conduct much more effectively in the quiet, and they both liked that._

_L was leaving now, though; on his way out across the Wammy's House grounds to the car, where Watari was standing with Roger. Mello and Matt were still chasing around him, asking him why he was leaving so soon and when he was coming back and why hadn't he caught that crazy Kira guy yet._

"_It's so early," Mello whined, pulling L's arm. "Why can't you stay longer? You usually do."_

"_I have a flight to Japan tomorrow, Mello," L explained wearily, with the tone of someone who has already explained the same thing five times prior to this one. "It leaves at 6:30am."_

"_You never sleep anyway," Matt pointed out._

"_I know, but I haven't packed anything."_

"_You two, leave L alone," Roger chided irritably from beside the black Jaguar._

_Ignoring him, Mello tugged again on L's arm._

"_Okay, fine, but when are you coming back?" He demanded in feint anger._

"_I… I don't know. Soon, okay?" L mussed Mello's blond hair beneath his thin white hand. "Hopefully I'll be able to catch Kira quickly once I get to Japan, and then I'll come back and see you again."_

"_Yeah, you have to come back for my birthday!" Mello chirped. "13th December, don't forget!"_

_L smiled._

"_I won't, Mello."_

"_Alright, Mello, Matt, back inside, now," Roger said firmly, pointing at the building behind them._

"_Okay, okay," Matt muttered, rolling his eyes. _

_He and Mello hugged L each in turn and ran off back up to the orphanage building, still waving. _

_Near was still standing the middle of the car park, completely silent and unmoving. L turned his gaze on him, beckoning to him. Near shuffled over very slowly, gaze alternately on L and the graveled ground. _

"_I left something in your room for you," L said in a low voice once Near had reached him; making the twelve year old look up in surprised curiosity. _

"_Really?"_

_L gave a short nod, offering no clue as to what it was; reaching then into his pocket and pulling something out._

_A brown envelope, sealed with several strips of tape._

"_Don't open it," he said confidentially. _

_Near blinked at him, taking it._

"_Then what…?"_

_L gave him a cryptic smile._

"_I don't mean __**never**__ open it," he went on. "But don't open it now." _

"_Then when can I?" Near asked, tucking the envelope into his own pocket._

"_You'll know." L bent down and gave Near a quick, loose hug. "Hopefully I will see you soon, though."_

_Near gave a nod when L let him go; and the detective turned on his heel without another word and went to the car._

_Though it was the last time Near – and Mello and Matt – ever saw him, even the stark knowledge of L's death had never prompted him to tear the tape off that envelope. L had said he would know when to open it and though Near knew a great many things, that was one thing that had never graced his knowledge. _

_To this day, he'd never known when was the right time to complete the last gift L had ever given him._

* * *

_Afraid to start, got your heart in a headlock,  
I don't believe any of it.  
You say too late to start, with your heart in a headlock,  
You know you're better than this. _

Imogen Heap, _Headlock _

* * *

Light couldn't stop shivering.

He was still tightly curled under the blankets, fisting his hands into the sheets trying vainly to anchor himself in some way against the tremors rattling his body.

The tears hadn't lasted for long, drying in exchange for blank-eyed trembling. It was all he could do, it seemed; the reaction completely involuntary, and all consuming. Ranging from the occasional spasm in his legs to the constant violent chattering and trembling in his jaw and arms; he was racked by the physiological response.

But the _cause _wasn't purely physical. Certainly, forcing himself to shove his cock into a block of ice hadn't helped any, but the way the chill clung to him was unnatural. It wasn't just limited to where he had touched L, but seemed to have seeped into his very being, dipping into his pores and settling in his center. Dry ice had replaced the marrow of his bones, and the freezing vapors were now filling him completely, petrifying his muscles, coating his lungs in frost, turning his veins into a network of pain-laced threads. Perhaps the irrepressible shivers were the only thing keeping him alive at this point, keeping everything moving just enough to not become coated over in a sheen of ice.

But even with the glacial blood now flowing through him, he knew he couldn't blame his behavior on that alone. He wasn't shivering just from the cold, there was also a slimy nauseous fear slithering around his heart that caused him to quiver. The fear of a truth he wasn't ready to face.

Light had hidden it away as soon as he had grasped his situation, inactivated, overprotected by his denial. The seed of that astonishing and disturbing idea germinated under the painful normalcy of his previous life, familiarity hanging around the rooms like dust, and it had finally grown out of his control and blossomed into a rare and terrifying reality.

Ever since L had abandoned him in the empty bed without so much as a backwards glance – ever since L had crushed any hopes he had at bringing things back to the way they were before – he had been forced to uncover his eyes and unplug his ears to the obvious truth that had been spitting in his face all along:

This wasn't a second chance, and things weren't going to effortlessly fall into place like he had hoped.

He simply couldn't retrace his steps, relive his life. That option had withered like a flimsy dream before the blazing dawn as soon as L materialized from his grave and so dramatically altered the timescape. But, neither could he reclaim the life he had known before, when a living L had always been within arms length, a fairytale that he had personally destroyed with his own hands. It was also _L_ who denied him returning to that time, making it quite clear that whatever he may have felt for Light before was now overrun by his devastating loss; something he placed the blame for squarely on Light's shoulders.

No, this life wasn't any of those things, and Light was _finally_ beginning to appreciate that. He had lost his memory, if only in bits and pieces, and he now understood to a much greater extent just how much that meant. Memories were the moorings in time; they made up his coherence, his reason, his feeling, and even his action. Without them, he was nothing.

It was that frightening revelation that pinned him to the bed, stole his breath, and sent him spiraling into ratcheting tremors.

His encounter with L, as wrong and awful as it had been, was enough dispel his last hesitations. He couldn't hunker down in this apartment anymore, afraid to face the world. He couldn't just hide and wait around for Near come and defeat him _again. _This wasn't his L. This wasn't his second chance at repairing his life or his love.

Redemption wasn't going to be handed to him, so instead he was going to have to _take _it.

L wouldn't be his friend, L wouldn't be his lover, so he would have to settle with him being his rival. His _victim_.

He stilled at that thought, the suddenness of it startling him out of his self-defeating loop. The shivers faded away as he was warmed by the familiar fire that his determination always brought, his eyes now alight with more than tears.

A ruby predatory glint, signifying the complete revival of Light Yagami.

* * *

_Dug my pride with a knife  
Encaged by your obsession with me  
Time was mental torture and screams of justified pain _

-Imogen Heap, _Getting Scared _

* * *

**Narroch: **I would just like to point out that, in the canon _Death Note_ anime, Near doesn't walk. Not ONCE. Whether it is just cause he is lazy as hell, or because he just CAN'T, we will never know. Seriously, you know why he keeps the SPK around? So they can cart his albino ass across the room. (rolls off laughing)

**RobinRocks: **Ah, she bitched about me writing him able to walk, but that's just completely impractical to suppose otherwise, even if it IS true…

Additionally, anyone about to roast us with "But Mello didn't leave the Mafia until blah happened and thingie did this!"... Save it. You will of course recall that _Danse Macabre_ takes place in an alternate timeline. So no more Mafia fun for Mello. He gets stuck with Matty instead.

Oh, don't act like you're _upset_...!

Okay, fanart! All links are posted to my profile. We have another piece by **BakayaroManiac**, illustrating THAT scene form _Glass Coffin_, a piece by **Vandervort** of Light crying from _Gingerbread_, and one that I only JUST discovered thanks to someone telling me about it on DA, by **Horus-Goddess**, of Light kissing L from _True Love's First Kiss_. **Nilahxapiel** also drew one of L and the cat from _Gingerbread_, but she only sent it to me as an attachment and didn't – to my knowledge – post it up anywhere, so there is no link to it. This will be resolved if and when she posts it somewhere – DA was apparently not playing in her favour…

Speaking of… the link to **BakayaroManiac**'s _Glass Coffin_ piece is possibly playing up. I couldn't get it to work on my computer but I thought it was merely screwing up, but apparently the link doesn't work on DA either (it's on y!gallery because of Mature Content), so… if the one on my profile doesn't work, could someone tell me, and I'll look into getting another one that does. It's just that I can't get y!gallery to work on my computer at all, so I figured maybe it's just me…

Also, as a last note… Uh, the LightxL thing last chapter wasn't exactly necrophilia. Get your minds out of the gutter!

…Says the creator of this EPIC LXLIGHTXL YAOI FIASCO…

:D

**Narroch: **Imogen Heap is my current obsession. Beautiful music, unique lyrics, and eclectic sound overall. Go listen now.

**RobinRocks: **My, how unspecific an order that was…

TTYS 'til next time, guys! Hope you enjoyed the MNM factor!

- RobinRocks and Narroch xXx


	17. Apples, Roses, Blood

THIS IS A REPOSTED VERSION OF _APPLES, ROSES, BLOOD_, WITH ADDITIONS BY NARROCH, WHO PULLED THE SICK CARD LAST TIME.

* * *

'All I want is to be with you;  
Show your cards, show me what you got—  
We'll break these poker faces, like it or not…'

_- Warm Me Up_; The Audition

* * *

Apples, Roses, Blood

He hadn't been altogether delighted at leaving L alone in the apartment all day, but Light had opted to go to university and sit through his two lectures – determinedly putting the dead detective out of his mind, and re-gathering his bearings in this previously-lived life, reacquainting himself with the student mold he had broken years ago.

He'd been planning on putting L in the bathroom and locking the door when he left, but on retrieving his bag from his bedroom, he'd found L sitting in silence on the windowsill, looking out of the window; as though an ornamental porcelain doll, absolutely unmoving, and something compelled him to leave him alone.

In the gap between his lectures he'd tried to call Misa three times, but every time it just rang endlessly and then went through to her answering machine. He was tempted to leave a message, but at this point didn't know what to say. He rarely left messages anyway since Misa normally called him back the instant she realized she had a missed call.

Light got home reasonably early and went straight through to his bedroom to throw down his bag; L was still sitting in exactly the same position on the windowsill, clearly not having moved at all, but Light pointedly ignored him as though he was simply part of the décor. Instead he left for the kitchen to fix himself something to eat; the apartment seemed to be in one piece, proof that L really _hadn't_ moved, and the broken mirror was even still propped up on the sideboard where he'd left it.

He made himself a sandwich and had only taken a single bite of it when his phone buzzed in his pocket; he slid it out and flipped it open, swallowing his mouthful.

"Hello?"

"Light?" His father's voice seeped through the line, riddled with concern. "Are you alright?

"Yeah, dad, I'm fine. I just wasn't… feeling so great yesterday. I'm feeling much better now, though."

"Good, because we could do with you coming in today, if you have time. We think we have a new lead on Kira."

"Oh, okay." Light indulged in a smirk and looked at his watch. "I can probably be there in about forty-five minutes."

"That would be great. See you later."

Light was aware of L appearing in the kitchen doorway, as though summoned from his perch by the conversation, as he bid his father goodbye and flipped his phone shut.

"What?" Light snapped, standing up and pocketing his phone.

L tilted his head a little.

"They are more foolish than I thought," he said softly, "to still believe your lies."

Light's eyes darkened, but reassumed their arrogant glint just as quickly.

"Your accusations against me were always worthless," he gloated, "and this only proves it. They never suspected me again after you died."

He pushed L out of the way to go to the bedroom and change his clothes, the small verbal victory warming him nicely, even when the chill of L against his palm still sent a small shudder right up the length of his arm.

"You actually take pride in it, don't you?" L whispered tonelessly, not looking at him. "The fact that you lie and they all believe you, even your own _father_… What you are doing is despicable, Light-kun – pretending to help them while leading them in fruitless circles, and you take _pride_ in it."

"Your opinion doesn't matter anymore, L," Light snarled; and then he smirked, sliding his hands over L's bony shoulders from behind him and leaning close to whisper in his ear. "…And by the way… _I'm_ L now."

L closed his eyes on those words, as though the sound of them spoken by Light's poison-laced whisper were painful to him.

Satisfied, Light slipped his hands from L's slender shoulders again, backing away out of the kitchen and starting down the hall, internally relishing his own brilliance.

Halfway towards his room however, he halted in his tracks, ego trip suddenly faltering once again on the unexpected; hearing from behind him L start to make an eerie little choking noise, something that sounded almost like the beginning of a dry wrenching sob, but—

The noise doubled over itself and strengthened, sending the helical sounds refracting down the hall in a fit of synesthesia.

_Laughing_. He was laughing. It was a horrible sound, nothing like the odd little laugh he'd had before, the one that had had a childish edge to it – this really sounding more like he was crying, but he wasn't, he certainly wasn't; though he wasn't feeling any joy either, that much Light knew.

Unsettled, Light gave a shake of his head and picked up his pace again, going into the bedroom and closing the door, leaning against it with a deep breath. It wasn't enough to shut out the prickly laugh completely, but it at least muffled the sound enough so that it wasn't scraping the vellum off his ear drums anymore.

He just didn't know how to deal with this new L – just when it seemed that he'd finally gotten his nerve back to stab the knife beneath skin, his prediction of how L would react completely blew up in his face, and Light didn't like that about him at all. He was cruel, cold and vindictive – perhaps with good reason – but Light certainly didn't want him taking up permanent residence with him.

He was an altogether different type of presence to even a Shinigami.

As wacky as it seemed, maybe he should look into some kind of exorcism, or something similar, that would be able to shift the dead detective, since it didn't look as though he was going to be leaving of his own volition, despite his complaints about how he didn't want to be here.

Still, he didn't have time to worry about that right now; he changed his clothes, ran a comb through his hair and grabbed his wallet, phone and keys, shoving them into the pocket of his coat as he pulled it on and headed out of the room again.

The apartment was deathly silent again, L's strange laughing fit having stopped and congealed into the very air, though Light made no effort to seek him out to see what had made him do so; he had just reached the front door when L came out of the kitchen again, the sparse fruit bowl clutched in his hands.

Light with his hand on the door, eyed him warily, though said nothing; pausing to wait for him to make the first move.

L held it out, and said, matter-of-factly;

"You don't have any apples."

Light blinked at him, caught badly offguard. L dropped the wooden bowl, spilling the few oranges, bananas and peaches it had contained all over the floor.

"Bring me one," L said softly, his voice taking on a creepy little song-like lilt.

Light walked out of the front door without a word, slamming it behind him.

* * *

He'd debated stopping to buy apples on his way home; who knew, maybe L would take it and get lost.

But, ultimately, he didn't. It just reminded him of Ryuk's demands for apples and he hadn't been too happy to fulfill those needs either. Why _should_ he go around shelling out on apples for Shinigamis and dead detectives who kept barging uninvited into his life?

Ryuk reminded him of Misa, and so he tried her again on the way home, only to be put through to her answering machine once more.

L was apparently lurking in wait for him, present right before him when Light stepped into the apartment and closed the door, shrugging off his coat.

"Get out of the way," Light growled at him, pushing him aside to head for the bathroom; he'd eaten with the task force over paper work and new "leads", and now it was late, so all he could think about was a nice hot shower before bed.

"Did you bring me an apple?" L asked him, padding after him.

"No." Light opened the bathroom door, glancing over his shoulder. "Stop _following_ me!"

"You won't bring me an apple," L said liltingly as Light pushed him away. "You don't love me anymore, Light-kun."

Light shut the door and locked it, knowing L was only doing it to be malicious – asking for an apple, mocking both his identity as Kira and the token of the relationship they'd had. Light wasn't going to bend to him, because he'd probably only throw the damn apple back at him anyway…

Throwing his towel over the rack, Light quickly pulled off his clothes and started up the shower, stepping into the glass cubicle and pulling the door closed behind him. It felt good to just be in this clean little enclosed space, enshrouded by steam and massaged by deliciously hot water – away from the idiots at university and the idiots at the task force office and _L_…

He washed his hair and then soaped the rest of his body over with citrus shower gel – pissed off with himself for recalling right _now_, at this exact moment, how the shower in his and L's private quarters in the investigation building all those years ago had only ever been supplied with strawberry-scented gel _and_ shampoo – which, if nothing else, perhaps explained why L had sometimes given the appearance of trying to eat him.

Though that wasn't the L that haunted him, demanding an apple for the sake of bitter mockery; nor indeed the L who'd nuzzled against his neck after having his mouth pried from Light's shoulder; the L that he had shattered, just as the thing that wore L's appearance, walking his halls now bound with chains of a different nature, had shattered that mirror—

Or maybe he _was_.

Maybe he was just _like_ that mirror that Light had so painstakingly pieced back together – he _was_ L, he _was_ still himself, but the L Light had known before was one who'd yet to be murdered and then torn back out of Heaven, and that was why he didn't seem as though he was the same person.

Hell, who _would_ be the same after that?

And if he was still L… then why should Light be afraid of him? Certainly, there were points at which Light could recall L striking terror into him, but he hadn't been constantly afraid of him, chills crawling down his spine at even the sight of him. No, he shouldn't be bullied by him like this, because L was _dead_; Light had beaten him, and it was only a show of weakness if he cowered before him in his revived state, afraid of him simply _because_ he'd killed him.

This was correct, after all, and exactly as planned; they'd both always known there wouldn't be a happy ending, because it had simply never been a fairytale, just as a story governed by the names written down in the book that held it never _could_ be.

And why the fuck was he letting him have the run of the place, anyway? Why didn't he just tie him to a chair, gag him and forget about him? He wasn't "alive", per se, so he wouldn't have to bother about food or bathroom breaks – he could just leave him in a locked room and ignore the fact that he'd ever crawled back out of his grave.

Yes, that was what he would do, as soon as he was done in here; he'd had enough of this Casper the Unfriendly Ghost crap from L…

Feeling quite a bit more at ease, Light gave a sigh and relaxed, leaning his back up against the glass wall of the shower and closing his eyes to enjoy just a few moments of standing there with no sound coming to his ears but the pounding of water and hissing of steam.

Gradually the flow of water began to ebb, slowing and thinning, and Light opened his eyes in puzzlement, thinking that maybe he'd leaned up against the knob that controlled the power and accidentally turned it down; but on turning towards it found that it hadn't moved at all. Giving an angry little sigh of frustration, he started to twist it back and forward, first to the left all the way to Max, and then in the opposite direction down to Zero. He felt a few small splashes hit his head and kept working at it, thinking maybe it was just jammed; and then flow widened a little more, raining in a short burst onto his head and shoulders before shuddering out completely.

Preoccupied, it didn't really dawn on him at first that, out of the corner of his eye, blooming in his periph and drawing his gaze downwards, he could see red pooling at the bottom of the shower.

He blinked rapidly and took a sharp skittish breath, his hand freezing on the power knob as he stared; around his feet, most of it having drained away was a distinctly-red liquid curling like crimson fern fronds in the water, that could only be…

He felt his stomach twist sickeningly on realizing that it _must_ be _blood_, but…

Where from? Had he cut himself? Had the wound in his hand opened itself again? He checked, finding it safely covered with its plaster, not a trace of blood on it; and, unsettled, unconsciously ran his hands over the rest of his wet body, withdrawing them from contact with his shoulders to find them suddenly dyed bright red.

And then, as he stared at them in disbelief, the shower suddenly jerked back to life again, cascading down on his shivering form; though now painting all of him crimson beneath its unmerciful rainstorm of blood, and no matter how illogical he knew it to be, he couldn't help choking on a scream that died in his throat from sheer horror as he backed up against the far wall of the shower cubicle, as far away from it as possible.

"As far away from it as possible", however, wasn't far enough; it was a narrow, enclosed space, and he was still being sprayed by the hot blood that was coming from the head of his shower, and whether it was an optical illusion or a hallucination or a dream or _real_, he still felt absolutely sick to his stomach on being drenched by it, the feeling of it still hot, as though freshly cut from an artery, the clear glass walls of the shower becoming spattered and slippery with gore—

The walls of the shower itself were almost opaque now by the degree of blood on them, and though that too was illogical – for them to have become coated so thickly in so short a space of time with the showerhead at such an angle – it didn't even matter to Light at the moment as he fumbled desperately for the handle, smearing dark handprints on the already dark door, all he cared about was getting out from beneath the sinister stream of slaughter—

He slammed the door open, slipping with how quickly he did so and tripping over the edge of the shower floor, landing in a wet, shivering, blood-drenched tangle on the bathroom floor, the shower itself still running. With a small groan he curled up, fighting the urge to heave as the stench of blood clinging to him became overpowering for a moment. He took a few long deep breaths, clenched his hands while ignoring the uncomfortable _squelching _sensation as a result; trying desperately to inject the strength into his limbs to push himself up.

He felt a shadow fall over him, felt his lungs spasm involuntarily all over again and, on looking up, found that all of his prior promises to himself to no longer be afraid of the dead detective shriveled and died once the shadow was connected to the detective himself. Instead he gave faint little gasp, and curled up smaller still on the shower mat, though his eyes only grew larger, unable to tear away from L, who towered over him indifferently, his eyes devoid of any emotion whatsoever.

"You…" Light choked on the word, his previous fear suddenly justified by the hot burning shot of anger he felt towards the man, angry enough to lunge himself forwards in an attempt to grab L's legs and bring him down despite his muscles convulsing in mutiny; the other man was swift enough to step back out of his reach with ease.

Enraged further by this evasion, Light attempted to push himself up – and perhaps more shocked by the ordeal than he had realized, found that his limbs had begun to tingle on and off, felt an echo in his chest which drummed all the way up to his ears, and though he saw L's mouth moving, he couldn't hear the words spilling out. His vision was suddenly swarmed with a plague of black feathery spots and the last thing he felt was his face bucking forward as the rest of his body slumped in a dead faint. He didn't feel it when he hit the floor.

He was out for less than a minute, awakening still naked, shivering and smelling like a slaughterhouse, though now with only one thought in his mind full of hate and tension – a riptide of blood he was willing to swim through: _find L and fucking kill him… _

L had done it. His mind was a storm, usual insight gone, but it still seemed obvious that it had to have been him. He didn't know _how_ he had done it – he'd clearly come back from the grave with some kind of demonic power or maybe he was magic now or _something_ but fuck, _he'd_ done it, he'd turned the shower water to blood, Light just knew it…

His eyesight shuddered with black again as he hauled himself up, the spots unwilling to leave their spinning dance floor in his vision, but he didn't keel over, buoyed up by the insatiable anger. Instead he stumbled to the towel rack and grabbed his towel, slapping it around his waist, not even caring that he was no doubt still drenched with blood and that his shower looked like the one off the set of _Psycho_, all he cared about was hunting down L and plunging every knife, letter opener and pair of scissors he owned into him.

He went to the kitchen, in part looking for L and in part to actually arm himself with a knife – pulling the largest one he had from the wooden block. L wasn't in the kitchen, and a quick glance told him that he wasn't in the lounge, either.

Bedroom, then.

The bedroom door was open, and on entering, naked but for his towel and with the knife clutched tightly at his side, Light found L sitting on the floor in his familiar crouch, arranging a pack of playing cards that he'd found and emptied out onto the carpet.

"You did it," Light hissed in a low voice.

L glanced up at him curiously.

"What did I do, Light-kun?"

"Don't fuck with me!" Light yelled at him, losing his cool. "The shower, the water was…! You turned the water to blood, you bastard, don't play dumb with me!"

L blinked at him.

"I don't have the power to do that, Light-kun," he said flatly.

"Oh? Then what's _this_ all over me?"

L tilted his head further, then finally gave it a shake.

"Water, Light-kun. There is no blood on you at all, not that I can see."

Light halted, caught off-guard. He hadn't expected L to deny it and play dumb, he'd expected him to smirk and be cryptic about how he'd done it, but not… not pretend that he couldn't even _see_ it.

"Look at yourself, Light-kun," L went on boredly. "There is no blood."

With nothing else to do _but_ look, Light held out his arms before him; finding that L was right:

There was no blood on him. He felt his shoulders and his hair and face, finding that his hands came back unstained but for clear droplets of water.

He looked at L for a moment or two in stunned silence, then turned on his heel wordlessly and went back to the bathroom, the knife still clutched in his hand; bursting in there to find that the shower still running, but…

The water was clear, and the cubicle itself was devoid of any traces of blood at all.

Had… had he simply _imagined_ it? Was it just a result of stress, because of L suddenly appearing back into his life fresh from his gravesoil…?

After hesitating for a moment, Light crossed the bathroom and reached into the shower, turning it off – then backing away a few steps, taking deep breaths to calm himself down.

"Perhaps Light-kun has gone mad," L offered offhandedly from the doorway, having left his cards and followed him; he stepped into the bathroom, causing Light to whip around, wielding the knife.

"Don't come any closer to me, you monster," the younger man whispered savagely. "Whether I imagined it or not… it was because of _you_."

"Kira calls me a monster?" L smirked at him. "How ironic—"

Losing his tether completely – and perhaps this murderous urge had been working at him all day, and all yesterday too – Light interrupted L by slamming him up against the bathroom wall with one arm, the sharp jut of his elbow digging into L's pale throat, and with the other arm, burning blood and rage and adrenaline all into one meteoric impulse driven fist, plunged the knife into his heart with all of his strength.

The blade sank in with more ease than Light had expected, slipping neatly between ribs as if he were punching a hole through paper, and the momentum was enough to jerk his own body forward until he was pressed fully against L's.

"Shut up, L, just _shut the fuck up_," he hissed in his ear, leaning even closer to him as he grasped the handle of the knife so hard that his knuckles burned and twisted the blade. "How _dare_ you come back here and toy with me like this after I beat you? You can't go back to your grave? How about I _send_ you back?"

Light expected a gasp of pain, or shock, he would have even accepted anger being breathed back at him, but instead L began to bubble with that awful, choking little laugh again, his mouth in turn beside Light's ear.

"You'll have to try quite a bit harder than _that_, Light-kun," was all he said in reply.

Light loosened his grip on the knife, blinking a few times as the reality of what he was trying to do – murder a man who'd already been murdered – sank into his consciousness; and L used the opportunity to push him away, revealing the knife still twisted into his chest, submerged into him right up to the black plastic hilt.

Light gazed at it in macabre interest, noting that here too there wasn't a single trace of blood; and more grimly fascinated still by the fact that L had made no move to remove it from himself, either.

Instead he leaned in towards Light again, giving him a dry, loveless kiss on the mouth before pulling back and leaving the bathroom without a word, still wearing the evidence of Light's murderous intent.

Light wiped his mouth though L had really left no trace of the kiss lingering on his lips but for how cold they felt in the aftermath of it, feeling it to be the only thing he could take strength from; to reject his kiss, knowing that L, even after all this time, still knew exactly how to let Light think he was winning, only to get up before the referee hit "Ten!" and pound him into the mat without even a trace of the mercy he pretended to exhibit.

Yes, L was a monster; Kira might be a killer, but he was merciful at least to those who were good.

L knew no mercy at all.

* * *

Light needed something before bed to gloss over his wounded synapses and snap himself out of the shock he was still partially in, and so he went to the kitchen in his pajamas to make a cup of tea. Very strong tea.

Sipping at it and feeling better for its bland warmth, Light sank into a chair at the kitchen table; thinking about where he could buy rope and duct tape tomorrow.

He didn't have the option of killing L and dumping his body in a lake or anything – L had just aptly proved that he couldn't be killed, and despite the fact that he now knew his name, Light doubted that a Death Note would work against him a second time. Maybe he could just take him out somewhere with him and ditch him; if he had no money or means of communication it was likely he wouldn't be able to get back to the apartment – but then, who knew _what_ he'd do if he was allowed to roam free on the streets of Tokyo. He might turn into a serial killer or something and then even _Kira_ would be pretty stuffed, given that he couldn't be stopped by the Death Note.

Keeping him here was really the only option he had, but was this it now? Was he going to be saddled with him for the rest of his _life_? Was there really never going to be a way for him to go back to his grave where he belonged and leave Light in peace…?

As though summoned by such a thought, L ambled into the kitchen; the cards clutched loosely in his hands and the knife still staked in his chest, giving Light a mocking salute.

Light glanced at the blatant jut quickly before averting his gaze.

"Give me my knife back," he bit out.

"I will take it out when I feel like it," L said in reply, sitting opposite him, shuffling the cards in his long fingers. "Would you like to play Twenty-Ones with me?"

"No," Light snapped; hell, there was a game he hadn't enjoyed even when L had been _alive_…

L said nothing, dealing him two cards anyway and putting deck face down off to the left of the table.

Glaring at him, Light put down his tea and picked up the two cards L had given him, glancing over them. Ten of clubs and nine of diamonds.

"Stick," he hissed, watching L intently all the while for a sign of movement in either of his sleeves.

"Stick," L responded pleasantly; and if he _had_ cheated, he certainly hadn't shown it.

"Nineteen," Light said, throwing his cards down and picking up his tea in their place to take a sip.

"Twenty-one." L dropped his own cards – ten of hearts and ace of clubs – onto the table's surface with an efficient flick of his thin fingers, with a smirk to mark his victory; not that Light was overtly surprised. "I win."

"Yes," Light agreed tersely; bracing himself up not to show discomfort when L got out of his seat again and came over to him. He was half-expecting him to clamber into his lap, since that had often been a favorite move of his on winning, but L in fact slipped being him, the hilt of the knife jabbing Light in the back squarely between his shoulders.

He slipped his hands over Light's shoulders – just as Light had done to him earlier – and leaned down close to his ear.

"Light-kun," he said softly, "can I tell you something?"

Light's cinnamon eyes widened at the question that he recognized from all those years before – a constant buzz-phrase of L's, at least in the _aurora_-stages of their relationship, and…

He gave no answer, only taking a small obligatory sip of tea to spare himself that danger.

"You can take my title if you want," L hissed, nipping at his earlobe on pausing; "you can call yourself L all you want, and respond to the idiots who call you by it, but _I'm_ L, I'll always be L, and you _know_ that. There hasn't been a day that's gone by since the moment I died in your arms during which you haven't thought about me in some way and acknowledged that I'm L, and that aside… that title isn't yours to take. You aren't my true heir, and whatever isn't yours to take will eventually be taken back from you by the one to whom it truly belongs."

Light gave an unhinged little laugh, feeling L wrap his arms around his shoulders in a way that would have been sensual but for the fact that he was so cold to the touch.

"Be that as it may," the younger man said, "it wasn't my idea to become "L". It was my father's, so that it seemed to those higher up that you were still alive and leading the investigation."

"The investigation searching for _you_?" L bit at his ear again, caressing the soft flesh caught between his teeth with a chilling swipe of tongue before releasing him again to breathe cold air into his words. "Honestly, Light-kun, I'm not sure if this story is a tragedy or a comedy…"

He reached down and gave a single tug to the knife, sliding it out from his chest as easily as a yolk slips out of its shell, without even a smear of blood upon its blade. He reached over Light's shoulder with it and gently pressed the flat of it against his throat, the metallic chill almost indiscernible from L's fingers except for the keen edge which was now being tilted and pressed into his pulse.

"You know… all that time we were together before my death," L said, feeling that Light had fallen still and quiet now that there was a knife to his throat, "you were Kira. Whether you remembered it or not, you _were_ Kira, but… you wanted me dead. There is no doubting that conclusion, but if that was the case, Light-kun… it really _would_ have been as simple as picking up a knife and plunging it into my chest as you just did in the bathroom. Certainly I would not have been immune to it, as I am now."

"Don't be an idiot," Light hissed, his voice attempting to sound threatening when he physically could not be. "For all that time I was chained to you, I didn't want you dead – except when you cheated at Twenty-Ones – and even if I _had_, I would never have _stabbed_ you, I'd never have gotten away with it…"

"Heh. I suppose not."

L slowly removed the blade from Light's throat, trailing it down his chest and over his stomach with a feather-soft touch, tracing and circling his axis with the same grace of a poet's quill. It came to rest between his legs, given that the seat of the chair prevented him going any further. He pressed it against his crotch, feeling him take a small breath of discomfort and seeing his fingers grip the edge of the chair in a spasm.

"Light-kun thinks me cruel on having returned from my grave," L observed, sliding his other icy hand over Light's eyes, robbing him of any hope of accurate perception while the metal fang grazed and pressed relentlessly, "but honestly… I must admit that I think I was _always_ cruel enough to torment Light-kun in this way. I was simply never presented with an opportunity to do so."

"_You're sick_," Light breathed as L removed his hand from his eyes again.

L said nothing, taking the knife away from Light's groin and gently putting it down on the kitchen table on top of the younger man's cards; then unwinding his arms from around his neck and withdrawing away from him as though smoke curling away from its source.

He headed for the door, pausing at the threshold to look back at Light over his shoulder; the twenty-one year old simply gazing down in stunned silence at the knife on the table, gleaming and clean except for the humiliation and fear which now stained its grinning curve.

"Light-kun, can I tell you something else?"

"What?" Light asked tonelessly, not looking at him.

"As Kira," L said pleasantly, "you are surely so drenched in the blood of all those whom you have murdered anyway… I am honestly surprised you even _noticed_ a little bit more."

* * *

He had had neither the strength nor the resolve to chase L, catch him and turf him into the bathroom following the dead detective's vindictive little bit of knifeplay on various parts of his body in the kitchen; he didn't care _where_ he was as long as he wasn't in the bedroom, and, on finding the bedroom L-less, he was satisfied to just crawl into bed and curl up and try to forget about his resident spook until tomorrow.

Despite his L-induced ordeal (or maybe even because of it) he fell asleep rather quickly, though drifting between uneasy, barely-overlapping plates of fitful slumber; the repose itself becoming more uncomfortable as the night wore on, causing him to toss around, not really awake, but conscious enough to know that he couldn't sleep properly, until finally he woke up completely to the sensation of what felt like his chest being crushed.

He gave a few short gasps, trying desperately to drag air into his lungs; but it was as though they had suddenly been packed with concrete, refusing to expand and take in oxygen. He could feel now that it wasn't that his chest was being weighed down and _crushed_, exactly – it was that it was _freezing_, the sheer coldness feeling like a painful oppressive weight against his shuddering lungs and searing every breath he managed to grasp—

Finding, on wrenching his eyes open, that L was sitting on him, low down on his chest, which was the obvious cause of his discomfort.

He weakly shoved at him, trying to push him off so that he could breathe – not because L was heavy, but because the icy aura radiating from him was making Light's lungs and heart and head ache, a painful coating of rime obstructing the blood and air he desperately needed. He felt that he honestly might _die_ if L didn't get off him…

"…L… _off_…" he gasped out, coughing weakly. "I can't… _breathe_…"

L tilted his head as though puzzled, not moving; straddling Light as he had often before, even that first time, before the train that was soon to be wrecked had even begun to pick up speed…

Light's eyes closed again and his hands dropped back to the mattress, the younger man instead focusing on taking what shallow breaths that he could; and L reached out with a hand to his face, resting his chill palm against a flushed cheek. Light shivered further at his touch, half-repulsed and half-discomforted further still.

"L, _please_…" he panted breathlessly, his voice barely audible. "You're… _you're killing me_…"

He winched his eyes open again on that, just to see if it had had any effect on him at all; a jolt of fear jerked through him, voltage running from scalp to toes on finding that L was smiling at him, though the smile itself was unhinged, an uncaring Great White grin, further enhanced by the way he was tilting his head, apparently thoroughly amused by such a notion—

That _he_ was killing _Light_; killing Kira, who had killed him.

Light's chocolate eyes slid closed again, finding himself unable to keep them open any longer as he began to see the color of suffocation creep into his vision, as he began to slip into it; and, as though the only reason he had done so was because Light fainting would end the fun of tormenting him, L slithered off him, settling back into a crouch between his legs.

Immediately feeling as though a weight much heavier than L's measly 110 pounds had been lifted from his lungs, Light sat bolt upright, coughing as he greedily drew in air. He rubbed at his chest in an attempt to warm it up, still shivering violently.

"Get out… of my room… you lunatic!" He hissed savagely at L, kicking at him; though the dead detective only twisted out of his reach, smirking blackly.

"Light-kun is so inhospitable," he breathed lethally, leaning forward towards him. "You didn't even offer me a place to sleep."

"You don't _need_ to sleep!" Light spat at him. "You're a _corpse_!"

L looked down at himself in disinterest.

"Am I…?"

Light swung his legs at him again, this time succeeding in knocking him off the bed.

"Get out, L," he snapped seethingly, glaring down at him as he untangled himself. "I've had enough. Go break a mirror or something…"

L gave an odd little giggle in reply, shattering Light's nerve again; as he got up, straightening to almost his full height so that he appeared to be far taller then he actually was, given that Light was still curled up in bed. Light suppressed a shiver of fear as L stepped towards him, his hair wild and thorny as though he'd mussed it up deliberately before waking him, to give himself a look more feral than that which he even possessed.

He reached down towards Light, long spider-like fingers ghosting towards his throat; and the younger man shrank back against the headboard, eyes widening and floating like yolks poached in fear.

"Get _away_ from me!" He hissed; though L's thirst today for tormenting him was apparently unquenchable, since he didn't stop or retract his arm – instead he lunged forward, hand striking like a snake.

His strong fingers gripped Light's throat bruisingly and pushed him down until L could touch his fingertips to the bed. He stepped back up onto the bed and settled over Light again, sitting across his lower abdomen and pelvis despite his bucking and thrashing legs.

"Leave me… _alone_!" Light gasped, grabbing his wrist and trying to twist him off.

L _did_ loosen his fingers on Light's throat, apparently having no real want to choke him; pulling his wrist free from Light's flailing grasp and instead running both freezing, spread hands first down over his chest, then slipping them up beneath his pajama top to slide fully over his skin. Light grimaced at this, his skin aflame with shuddering pinpricks; and then took a searing gasp of shock and disgust and fright when L suddenly pulled his hands out again, instead taking hold of either side of his buttoned-up pajama top and tearing it open, buttons bouncing across the mattress.

"You… can't be _serious_…!" Light managed to get out, struggling even as L managed to pull the remainder of the top from him.

"Serious about what?" L responded nonchalantly, fingers trailing down over Light's bare, shivering chest and onto his belly, leaving tracks of numb prickling skin on Light like an ice-skater's skimming path cut onto ice; then down lower, frozen palm pressing into his crotch in a way that made Light whine in high-pitched discomfort.

"A-after… last night…"

"Hn." Even with Light still struggling, L managed to pull his pajama pants from him as well, leaving him naked and shivering on the mattress.

Light only lay quivering beneath him, eyes wide and fixated upon him, searching for a sign that would betray his next move; too cold and terrified to do anything else.

L took his thumb to his mouth, for a moment looking like…

…_the real L_…

"This looks familiar," he mused; and then he smirked.

His icy hand splayed itself firmly on Light's heaving stomach again, pressing against the taut flesh; and then he purposefully trailed it lower, fingers toying along the softness of Light's flaccid length, making him shudder again, before wrapping his hand around it tightly.

The grip was painful; the cold was intolerable.

"_Don't_," Light groaned, the unbearable sensation working its way up the very core of his spine and making him roil on the sheets.

"Don't what?" L mocked, letting him go all the same; if only to slide his hand down lower still, underneath, and then—

"Ah, no—_NO!_" Light almost choked on his own words, back arching upwards off the mattress at the sheer pain and discomfort of having L's icy finger suddenly – sharply – invade him. "L, don't… Please, _don't!_"

L smirked at him, watching him jerk again, muscles flip-flopping as though electrocuted when he slid a second dry, cold finger up inside him; observing the way the young man bit his lip to dark red to prevent himself from screaming, instead only releasing a low keening from between his welded teeth.

Both his punishment and his amusement were fleeting; the moment he felt Light try to adjust to it – _try_ – he withdrew them again, letting him sink breathlessly back to the mattress.

L leaned forwards over him, running his thumb over the near-crimson bottom lip.

"Roses are red," he whispered, smiling that mad little smile again. He took his thumb away and leaned close, kissing Light on the cheek.

"Goodnight," he hissed; and he got off him, hopped off the bed and padded out of the room, closing the door behind him.

* * *

"You are persistent," L observed not even ten minutes later; after Light, against his better judgment, had pulled his ruined pajamas back on, thrown his robe over the top and followed him, finding him perched on the windowsill in the front room.

The dead detective didn't look at him, rather watching his reflection in the dark window – before averting his gaze back to the world outside.

Tokyo, lit up and glimmering beneath a black sky of inky clouds and no stars; but in their place—

"It's snowing," L said softly. He touched the windowpane, running his fingers down the glass, still not turning his gaze on Light. "Was this what happened, Light-kun? Did you stand at the window watching and wish for one with hair black as ebony and skin white as snow…?"

He finally turned his black mirrorless eyes on him.

"…Is that why I'm here…?"

"L," Light said, his voice quiet, "I don't understand what you _want_."

Turning back to the window, L absently went into his sleeve and withdrew the ace of spades, tossing it onto the floor at Light's feet.

"You don't have any apples," he said dully, seeming to be speaking more to himself. "Bring me one."

"Is that what all this is about?" Light hissed at him. "Everything you've done to me today… was it just because I didn't bring you a fucking _apple_?"

L looked at him again, eyes glazed; he tilted his head.

"Love apple?" He asked softly, his voice childlike.

Light shivered, and stepped away, starting out of the room again.

"I'll bring you one tomorrow," he bit out. "Goodnight."

"Yes, tomorrow," L repeated as Light shut the door.

And then he laughed.

* * *

'This could all be a reality  
If you just say you'll stay here with me  
I'll make sure everything is alright…'

_Warm Me Up_; The Audition

* * *

If you're here because you _reread_ this chapter to see Narroch's additions…

Thankyou! Have a cookie!


	18. Black Opera

**RR:** Okay, wow. It's about _time_ we updated – this is actually our longest gap between updates for _Poison Apple _EVER – even between acts… I can vouch for this because I haven't yet informed you guys that Princess Aurora is March's calendar girl on my Disney Princess 2008 calendar…

Blame Narroch. I do. :)

**Narroch: **Sorry for such a long wait guys! We don't really have an excuse since we planned on updating on St. Patty's day over a week ago. It was my fault cause I procrastinated. Sorry. (shields face)

**RR:** And on the topic of Narroch, two things:

**One: **You will recall that Narroch was ill and was thus unable to contribute to _Apples, Roses, Blood_, sooooo…

**Narroch: **_Apples, Roses, Blood_ has been redone and reposted with my changes, but honestly the only additions I made were mostly decoration and streamlining stuff. Don't feel obligated to reread it if you don't want to... O.o

**(RR) ****Two:** She (Narroch) bought me a shirt with Maleficent on it. :D It's pretty freaking awesome. You don't get shirts with Maleficent on over here in Britain… So between me and **Mayura-Hikari-090**, who mentioned she'd bought a _Snow White_ wallet in a review, we apparently have some kind of _Poison Apple_ merchandising campaign going on…

…Except that Disney are getting the money for it. :(

If anyone else has forked out for Disney merchandise solely because of this fic, please let us know! Ka ka ka…

Oh, and I finally got my _Another Note_ and read it! Yayz! Ah, what a great book that was… B, you lovely little psycho… :)

And to continue our _Sweeney Todd_ topic from last time, I got so caught up in it I did two things:

One: Wrote a _Sweeney Todd_-esque _Death Note_ fic called _By the Barber's Blades_, featuring Light and Misa as Todd and Mrs Lovett (and an actual _Sweeney Todd_ fic, _Five Little Things_).

Two: Replaced my Light/Raito poll with one about your opinion on whether or not Johnny Depp would make a good L.

Wow, I'm cool/have too much free time…

More news down the bottom; for now, thankyou to: **NaroRau, Lostpharoah, Lawliet's Angel, Mask of Mirage, tsuki aoi usagi, fouloldron, DoYouFindMeDreadful, oztan, Brittany745, Stina the Wicked, Mayura-Hikari-090, DMFAZINA, Travian sez, Elegant Arrow 64, CanIInterestYouInThisLifeOfMin, Akane-nechan, mornir-brightflame, Mysterious Penname, Arirang, antiheroine, hittocerebattosai, Jenna, No Shaking Throne, Fool4Sasuke33, BakayaroManiac, lexxxxxii, Phoenix of Hell, anja-chan, Tobi Tortue, Kaiji, yellowrose87, Caeru-NiaLe, Nyx-Zephyrus, regal danach, fluffy2044, Ashinan, HeladoFrito, lady jynx, shad0wform, Bekki, Diamond Wings, enigmaSEVen, Elia Black-cat, Kiki-sama, WhiteWolfCub, -, Death-to-the-tadpoleclowns, Celestial Secrets, Serria, Brigada, mikanX20, Liviania, Silent dagger, Chiya-chan, museic10, blueeyedchibi, Voxius, ****Tohru Daihikashousha, Fantushe, dreamsofpalmtrees, CelloSolo2007, Dawn-at-Midnight, TheMadHathor, kiyoiyuki, kaydoodle, Santri, wolvenlied, Verna Jast, BlingBling021, arsg66, The One and Only Lonely, Erena G.T. Rose, momijikk, Shima-ru** and **ryuran123352!**

**Narroch: **Oh, and thankyou all for the get better sentiments. They made me smile. :) The flu is not fun, don't ever EVER get it. And if you do, don't be a stubborn dumbass and wait three days before going to the doctor like I did. I had to be freakin hospitalized... DX So, thankyou for all the support, I love you guys!

And now that these ANs are obnoxiously long, without further ado, enjoy the chapter!

Black Opera

Having been dead didn't make it any easier – dying _for_ this, _because_ of this, didn't save any grace, didn't make it any clearer as to just what, on sitting back and looking at the whole thing now from a more detached and _critical_ angle, he should ultimately compare the whole thing _to_.

There were the fairytale allusions, of course; those spoke for themselves, with an archaic axiomatic beauty of their own. Spinning wheels and coffins of glass and sleeping spellbound deaths and apples, truly, sometimes he didn't wonder if the boy had sat at his desk one day and laid pen to paper and written, instead of a list of criminals' names, a story instead about a doomed love.

He wondered if that was what was instead concealed between the black-as-ebony cover and white-as-snow pages.

Though maybe that was just self-serving aggrandizement; searching for a deeper meaning behind it – searching for a reason for it, expecting there to _be_ a reason for his own unhappy ending, when in the end he simply had done what was expected of all things mortal. Wasn't that just arrogance, really, to _expect_ there to be a higher reason, to expect that someone truly cared enough to orchestrate all this…?

Yes, was he really as conceited as all that, on returning from death – to walk again in this realm and spend his timeless time in searching for the opera that was never written? Was that what he thought, that someone had written this sad story, this black, bloody ballet in which he learned to love someone, only for that someone to destroy him…?

It was too perfect, really – _too_ poetic. Too tragic, too much like a ballet or an opera or a fairytale unraveled, and thus it was surely supercilious to imagine it to be so. The magical metaphor broke down under the strain, disillusioned and drowning in cliché.

Was what had happened to him really so extraordinary?

Was Light Yagami really all that much crueler than any other human being?

But for the fact that Light was Kira and he was L, their story wasn't truly all that special. It might have happened to anyone – anyone human enough to love, and anyone human enough to kill.

It had been a long time since L Lawliet had lowered himself to think solely in cold, hard facts. But to calculate this, in retrospect of everything that had happened between himself and Light Yagami, cold, hard facts were the only way to circumvent the intimate, fragile emotions and reach a conclusion that laid aside his personal feelings on the matter:

Their story was simply one of humanity.

Ah, yes, how many pointless circles it chased itself in, an endlessly-spinning top, maintaining the gyre no matter how much the world roiled beneath it. It was human nature to commit crime – to lie, to steal, to murder – a never-ending cycle of oppression, and thus human nature bred criminals and Kiras and Ls.

The three all blurred into one, or so it seemed from the pulsing spin which distorted roles and blended functions till they were an indistinguishable cross-section of humanity; all a part of it, and all trapped by it (Kira thought himself above the rest of humanity, but L had once, long ago, concluded that Kira was indeed human, and in that alone Kira could never be all that far above those he judged – truly, L had never once lied when saying that he and Kira were alike…).

Criminals committed crimes and Kira judged criminals and L caught criminals. And in so many ways Kira was also a criminal so L chased him, though this was an opinion that Kira himself did not share, and all it really boiled down to was that all three categories were unquestionably human, and if they had been anything _but_ human, this situation probably never would have arisen. It was an equation, a complete and perfect triad – remove any of the three factors and the equation ceases to function. Kira wanted a criminal-free world but he needed criminals in order to be Kira, and the same went for L – he solved crimes to try and make the world a better place but if there was no crime then he didn't need to be L; and as _for_ Kira and L…

They needed each other. They needed each other in ways that were political and professional, but they also needed each other in ways that were _human_; for reasons like Rivalry and Hatred and Fear and Suspicion and Lust and Love…

It wasn't a fairytale. It was just because they were human. They came together because they were human and they stayed together because they were human and they were torn apart because they were human, because of _memento mori_ (_remember you are mortal_); because death is one of the biggest reminders of humanity there is, and L died, and hell, if _that_ didn't fuck up the fairytale…

All in all, L, having been dead, came to this conclusion easily now, the answer gently drifting over him uncoaxed, in a cool gush of understanding; because questionably he wasn't _human_ anymore. It was easier to see past the flaws that had blinded him before, not because he'd been stupid, but because he'd _been_ human. In those last moments, as he'd lain in Light's arms with a heart that had stopped working long before it snagged on a hemorrhaged clot and destroyed his body, he'd thought himself a fool, thought that this could have been avoided if only he'd never let Light shatter that glass coffin and drag him out of it—

That he could have cheated death – and _this_ death, especially – if only he'd remained untouched, inhuman.

He knew now, though, as something _truly_ inhuman, that it wasn't so. Light hadn't made him human by loving him or coaxing from him love in return – he'd always been human.

He'd always been capable of loving.

He'd always been capable of dying.

But now he wasn't, so he was no longer capable of those things.

Oh, he knew why he was here.

It was something no human could do – a human, with the ability to love or to die. The important thing was that their story hadn't changed to one of inhumanity.

It hadn't changed because it had ended, a long time ago; and it was a story that wasn't _even_ a story. His unhappy ending really hadn't been all that much more tragic than anyone else's – and Light Yagami was really no crueler than any other human.

It was just that humanity itself was cruel.

* * *

L was sitting on the windowsill of the front room again in his curled-up position; dark, dead eyes fixed on the cityscape of Tokyo outside, the city covered with a layer of fresh snow – white and perfect like the icing of a cake, glittering in the icy opal moonlight.

He didn't look away from it when Light came in, pulling off his coat.

"You're still there?" The younger man noted in disinterest, the phrase assembled like a question but without the rise at the end to convey real want of an answer.

L gave a silent shrug, still not looking at him.

Light tossed his coat into the hall and crossed the front room, stopping just short of the windowsill and moodily thrusting something outwards towards L with a faint rustling sound. His interest finally torn from the still scene outside, L glanced over his shoulder at the source of the rustling.

A brown paper bag was clutched in Light's hand, being offered out to the dead detective.

"What is that, Light-kun?" L asked, his voice benign.

"Your apple." Light thrust it at him again, this time more aggressively. "Take it, will you?!"

L took the paper bag in a jerky, defensive movement, clutching the package without making any motion to open it for a long moment – during which Light rolled his eyes and started to walk away, not caring anymore.

Half-expecting, admittedly, the apple to come sailing at him and hit him either in the back of his skull or middle of his spine.

However, having made it to the doorway unscathed, he paused on the threshold, looking back across the room at L; he'd finally discarded the paper bag, the thing crumpled on the floor beneath the sill, and was holding the apple up by the stem in his odd way, the glowing ruby glint of it juxtaposed by the monochromatic light of the moon.

He'd taken his time over choosing it – though he had no idea why. With Ryuk, he'd merely grabbed the first one to hand, knowing the Shinigami wouldn't even look at it before stuffing it down; but he'd taken a while in the shop today in search of the roundest and reddest apple in the tray.

He didn't know why he cared so much, since he knew L would probably just destroy it and/or throw it at him anyway as yet another outlet for his twisted impulses, but he hadn't been satisfied on emerging from the store without the best apple he could find. Perhaps he still cared enough about L's opinion to not want to disappoint him with an imperfect apple. He knew the detective was critical enough to pick out even the slightest blemish and in his strange way blame it on Light's own ineptitude.

It may have just been that he didn't want to be judged based on a bruised fruit.

And indeed, the one he'd eventually chosen was beautiful – maybe the loveliest apple he'd ever seen, with smooth, flawless flesh of deepest ruby red, polished to perfection so that it glinted like a mirror in equally perfect, mirror-like symmetry.

L eyed the thing suspiciously from every angle, all at once reminding Light immensely of the old L's quirky mannerisms, many of which had now been all but abandoned; and then finally seemed satisfied, taking it into both hands and bringing it to his chest, curling up tightly again with the rose-red fruit pressed tightly against his heart.

"This is a love apple then, Light-kun?" He asked blankly, turning his gaze to Tokyo again.

"If you want it to be," Light responded expressionlessly, finally leaving the doorway to go to the bedroom.

He was aware that L had followed him as he opened the wardrobe and tried his best to ignore him; he didn't think he could stomach an attempt to have a shower tonight, deciding to leave it to the morning, when he could just jump in and out again in five minutes.

"What _now_?" He bit out finally in irritation, shooting a glance at L in the doorway of the bedroom, pawing at the apple like it was a pretty crystal ornament, the beauty of which beheld in him a childlike fascination.

"Nothing." L ran his fingertips over the glass-like surface of the crimson orb in his hand.

Light snorted and pulled off his shirt, tossing it onto the bed.

"Stop playing with it," he snapped, pulling out an older, more comfortable button-down. "It's not a toy. Just eat it already, for god's sake."

"Is this a replacement?"

"No, it's… _what_?" Light blinked at him, thrown off by the peculiar question.

"Nothing." L cupped the fruit in both hands, in that odd little Snow White way of his, and raised it to his mouth.

Then paused, and lowered it again, the faintest hint of life suddenly coming into those dead dark eyes.

"Perhaps Light-kun has poisoned it?" He whispered delightedly, a giggle glittering under the words.

After a second, his abnormal amusement overflowed the banks of his words, and he rasped out his unsettling, coughing little laugh again – the sobbing, choked one, though this time it was a breathy little giggle rather than his full-on laughing fit of the day before.

Light felt a malicious smile creep onto his own stoic features, for the sake of Kira facing a victim of his regime rather than to go along with the unspoken joke.

"Perhaps," he agreed calmly, shrugging his shirt on and deftly buttoning it. "Perhaps I did. Though I expect any poison in which I may have submerged it wouldn't harm you."

"Such an assumption would be correct," L replied pleasantly. "Poisoning an apple would be a waste of your time." He paused again, lowering the unblemished apple a little more, then added, more quietly still; "…Poison doesn't affect me anymore."

Light felt the smile fade from his face, mouth becoming a tight, smoldering little line; watching L cross the room to the bed, the hand holding the still-unbitten apple now fallen limply back to his side.

Silence reigned between them as the dead detective stepped up onto the bed, settling himself up against the four pillows at the head of it; folding himself up into something of a nest of bedsheets and pillows, clutching the apple tightly all the while.

_Great._ Light eyed him icily; was this it for tonight? Had L parked himself here so that Light couldn't get into bed? Honestly, he was like a tenacious and neurotic housecat, planting himself wherever his owner would be most likely to see him, and the more of an inconvenience he made himself, the better.

Not to mention, in respect to the recent nightmarish events that had taken place on this bed with L, Light wasn't willing to have a repeat incident.

"Light-kun, can I tell you something?" L asked blandly, more interested in the reflection of himself cast in the apple's glowing skin than in the younger man across the room from him.

"What?" Light barbed in reply, at once wary of this request.

"I find it interesting that you bought only one apple." L looked up at him through thorns of black hair. "Here is something I have observed – something that humans do, as a rule. I noticed while I was alive because, admittedly, it is something that I used to do myself."

"Most other humans wear shoes, L," Light bit out unkindly in response.

"Treats like this," L said, holding up the apple and utterly ignoring Light's snide little dig, "are valued differently according to their quantity. Take, for example, a donut, then; a donut purchased in a singular sense might be placed in a paper bag and carried home very carefully, with the buyer of said donut having in mind a specific and predetermined time to enjoy it – that is to say, it is highly unlikely that buyer would eat the donut from the bag on the way home, or carry it home and then put it somewhere and forget about it. However, consider that the person in question buys a box of donuts instead of just one; the likeliness of them eating one on the way home vastly increases, as does the notion of the box being left on the side until someone happens to come across it. The idea that there is always 'another one' makes anything – it doesn't necessarily have to be a donut – lose its individual charm."

"How interesting," Light snapped scathingly. "I presume there's a _point_ to this delightful analogy…?"

L gave a shrug.

"It would feel like forcing it at this point, I admit," he said nonchalantly. "It's just that, based on this observation, I can't help but find it interesting that you presented me with a single apple, obviously carefully-chosen, in a paper bag. Like a gift, really."

"It wasn't a _gift_!" Light spat. "It's because you tormented me all last night because I wouldn't go and get you one immediately!"

"Ah, yes." L smirked blackly. "I _am_ quite spoilt, aren't I?"

Light glowered at him, running his gaze over his curled-up, pale, bony form, the apple serving as a centerpiece to a macabre statuette – one that represented a grudge that even death itself could not confine to the earth.

The dead detective was examining his convex reflection again in the ruby of the apple's skin, and in a way that was half-truth and half-venom, Light couldn't stop himself—

"You're not beautiful, L." He paused, took a breath; as L glanced up at him, tilting his head curiously, and then continued; "…You never were."

L's pale mouth twitched into a smirk again.

"I never thought that I was," he responded calmly; his smirk toned itself down a little, into more of a crooked, half-sad smile. "That was always _you_, wasn't it? Light-kun, isn't that right? _You_ were the beautiful one…"

He outstretched an arm before himself, sleeve riding up a little with the motion to flash his pale, bony wrist; his flexed his long, spider-like fingers, clawing at the air absently, again with the manner of a cat.

"No, I could never argue that," he agreed absently, watching his fingers dance in a manner that was almost grotesque. "Looks have never mattered to me, but I suppose that just as well… since I don't have any."

"That… that wasn't what I meant," Light said, losing his resolve for a moment under L's self-debasing rational.

L wasn't attractive, not in a conventional sense; but Light had never truly been repulsed by the hair black as ebony when it brushed against his stomach, or the skin white as snow when it was pressed heatedly against his in slick motion—

As far as looks went, he, Light Yagami, truly _was_ beautiful – though it wasn't the way L _looked_ that he was comparing to himself.

L had glanced at him again on this, seeming to curl up further, a dark anemone shying from the raw air, as though now, all of a sudden, made ashamed of the fact that he hadn't been blessed with the gifts of grace and beauty, though he claimed not to want or care for them.

"I meant your reasoning," Light said, finding strength in his words again. "Your justice… Oh, L, you thought yourself right; you thought yourself virtuous, battling Kira – battling _me_ – because I've murdered so many." Light's expression hardened, turning flinty in his conviction. "But the fact that you've never used the Death Note doesn't make you any better than me, my own personal beliefs about justice and morality aside. You're _worse_ than me, L – I became Kira because I care about humanity, because I want those who deserve to live a life without hatred and fear to _have_ that. _You_ don't care about humanity at all. Why did you get involved in this case? Because it _interested_ you! Not because you _cared_ about any of the people I killed – god, I bet _you're_ the one who put half of the criminals I've killed in jail in the _first_ place!"

"The fact that they were criminals does not make it—" L started blandly.

"I'm not even talking about _that_!" Light snapped, interrupting him; knowing that L hated to be interrupted – dead, alive, _some_ things about him seemed to have remained the same. "Forget the reasoning; forget the ideals of justice, just for a moment. Let's just talk about the humanity involved, since you always thought yourself righteous – you always thought yourself right, that Kira was wrong at all costs, but is that really _true_, L? On principal, why did you want to catch me so badly? Was it because you cared about the lives I was taking? No, it can't have been – it _can't_ have been, I know that much, and don't deny it, don't try that "Killing is always wrong" line on me, because I know you don't believe it any more than _I_ do."

"Why do you say that, Light-kun?" L asked airily, glancing at him over the horizon of the apple.

Light allowed himself a small smirk, having hooked L into his argument, and now bearing rhetoric ready to reel him in.

"Your first challenge to me? You used Lind L. Tailor – a decoy, pretending to be you, to experiment, to see if I could kill without contact. You used him as a guinea pig, and your ethical basis? _It was okay to use him because he was a criminal scheduled to die that day anyway_. In trying to catch me, you used my own method – but you didn't do it because you believed the world would be better off without Lind L. Tailor. You just used his life as a pawn. And the FBI agents, L? I know I killed them, but did you _care_? Did you care about those lives you threw away? You must have had an idea that they would die if you sent them after Kira, but you did it anyway."

"It is my fault, then?"

"Don't you think so?" Light said scornfully. "I wouldn't have touched them if you hadn't sent them after me."

"Yes, that does seem to be how you work, Light-kun," L concurred absently. "Killing anyone who stands in your way, even if they're not a criminal. I should know, right, _being_ one of those since-removed obstructions?"

"Maybe you weren't a convicted criminal," Light said in a low voice, "but you did worse things than some of the people I put to death."

"How so?"

"You possess the most influential power of any individual in the world, and yet, your frugal so-called justice, is merely a convenience to counteract boredom! You could be making a difference on a global scale with your kind of power, yet you hide behind a computer screen and are unreachable. If you really cared about improving the condition of humanity, you wouldn't ever cease working towards that."

"So my inaction is considered a crime?"

"When it results in genocide, and endless suffering for entire countries when a word from you might have stopped it, yes, that is a crime. You don't care about changing the world, or righting social wrongs, only the singular cases which can occupy your mind for a while until they are solved and you feel like moving onto the next case."

"Light-kun is stretching his point. You have no idea what I did or did not do before we met."

"True, but you still committed atrocious crimes, even during the time you were with me."

L didn't reply, obviously waiting for Light to continue.

"You put Misa in those horrible restraints, played that depraved trick on both of us, making us think we were going to be fucking _executed_, you stole Misa's phone from her—"

"Hardly worthy of the death penalty though, Light-kun."

"You would have let Higuchi murder innocent people to work out how Kira kills!" Light snarled, really losing his temper. "You wanted to test the Death Note – in fact, if I _recall_, L, that's what got you killed! Planning to have criminals condemned to death test out the notebook on other criminals to see if all the rules were real or not – that's why Rem wrote down your name, because if you'd done that, Misa and I would have been found out. Do you think that's right? Committing the crimes you were trying to pin on me, solely to catch me? How _dare_ you think yourself above me when you're _worse_? And in doing it without my moral high-ground, without a wish to make the world a better place as a result of your deeds… You're worse than Kira, and far more dangerous! Which is better, the "mass murderer" who kills to cleanse the world of evil, or the selfish bastard of a detective who kills to fuel the fires of his investigation? Was it just obsession, L? Were you so willing to become a killer yourself simply because you didn't want to lose to me – because you couldn't bear for this to be the one case that you could never solve?"

"Listen to Light-kun preach," L murmured in mocking delight.

"This isn't _funny_!" Light clenched his fists so tightly that they burned. "Lives mean something to me – that's why I punish murderers, to prevent them from taking any more lives, and so to deter further murders from taking place; but to you, other people's lives… they're just pawns, nothing but numbers. You called Kira a monster once, L, before you knew that I was Kira – but it's not true. _I'm_ not the monster – _you_ are, and I don't just say that because you're a walking corpse right now. You're the monster, you always were; a dangerous lunatic given equally-dangerous power. _You_ were more of a menace to the wellbeing of the human race than anyone ever believed that _I_ was… I saved people, L – I saved them from _you_, you and your little detective games."

"Has Light-kun finished his dramatic monologue now?" Was L's only response, delivered in a thoroughly-bored tone.

Light took a few deep, hot breaths, clenching and unclenching his sweaty palms a few times; give a small toss of his head to shake a few strands of hair from his dark eyes. He said nothing else, however – burnt out of vicious words after all that.

"Our own little fairytale aside," L said, glancing at the apple, "I must say… that none of this was ever a 'Beauty and the Beast' contest, Light-kun. Perhaps having been killed has affected the fact that I don't care who was right and who wasn't anymore – perhaps not. But that said, whichever of us _is_ right, and whichever of us _is_ the beautiful one… I feel inclined to point out that there is one very big difference still remaining between you and I, Light Yagami."

"Oh?" Light hissed. "That I got given my life back and you didn't?"

"No."

L unfolded his slender, bony body again, crawling out of his makeshift nest and across the length of the bed like a spider beckoned from the corner of its web by something suddenly becoming ensnared in its careful and elaborate trap. Light resisted the urge to back away from him, vastly unsettled once again as he felt the spider's heavy silk begin to bind up around him.

"You see…" L leaned towards him, cupping an icy hand near the younger man's ear as though one bitchy schoolgirl whispering gossip to another; "…_I don't think I'm a god_…"

Light blinked once or twice in silence; having no real answer for it, because it was true—

His fierce desire to win, coupled with his inability to get past L for the final word, caused him to settle for a less subtle retort. He'd leaned back and tackled L, hauled him over his shoulder, and carried him out of the room before he'd really even thought about what he was doing. L didn't struggle, didn't seemed pained by Light's attack, and simply hung limp over his shoulder, transfixed by his apple again. He barely acknowledged it when Light carried him to the bathroom and dropped him none too lightly onto the tiled floor.

Light closed the door as L sat up, holding his apple tightly; turning the key swiftly to hear a satisfying _click_, locking it from the outside. He pulled the key out, slipping it into his pocket, and walked off back to the bedroom.

L banged on the bathroom door a few times, not sounding terribly frantic or agitated, then calling to him;

"I see Light-kun still has some spine left in him!"

Light ignored him, shutting the bedroom door to drown his spiteful cries out; instead occupying himself by fixing up the tangled mess L had made of his pillows and sheets.

It didn't surprise him by now to feel how cold they were.

* * *

It became a pattern in his regime – locking L in the bathroom by night, and letting him out again in the morning to allow him to mooch about the apartment all day. He felt safer sleeping knowing that L would have to break down two doors to get to him, were he inclined to inflict real damage on him – though the dead detective never seemed to put in the effort required to warrant such an escape attempt.

He seemed happy to sit on the floor or in the bath or the shower or whatever in the dark until morning; sometimes he didn't come out even when Light left the door unlocked, and Light found himself often reversing the roles come morning when he needed to use the bathroom:

Booting L out into the corridor and locking himself in.

It went like this for a week or so, and during that week, L even stopped bothering Light so much; no longer following him like a new puppy demanding its master's attention, and even going so far as to pacify him, Light brought him books from his university library now that he didn't have ten simultaneous murder cases to occupy his time with.

But on Sunday 11th November, 2007, Light Yagami awoke in a different state of mind.

He couldn't let it all play out like this; though his memories of the time yet to come in this reversed time-zone were still largely scrambled and incomplete, he knew the name of the man… _man_? No, he wasn't a man – a boy, really, barely more than a child…

Well, the codename (at least) of his vanquisher was on his lips; a single English word, much like his own name.

_Near_.

Near was the key – destroying Near would all but ascertain his success this time around. He'd taken care of L, he'd taken care of Mello…

But _Near_ was the one who had slithered out of his grasp.

He'd known Near's name once – his real name, the name he needed to write down in the Death Note to get rid of him before the battle with him even started; but that knowledge was no longer his to possess, along with the image of his face.

The same went for Mello. They'd both been young – younger than L, and younger even than himself. But no matter how hard he concentrated and strained, going over every memory like it was a crime scene, he couldn't recall their faces into his mind; instead, he only came away with a headache.

That final clandestine piece was what he needed. Near's name. Near's face. It wouldn't hurt to deal with Mello, either, and so he added that to his mental list.

Near first and foremost – Mello if and when the opportunity arose.

And regardless of the fact that L was dead, nonexistent to all but Light in this post-L's-death 2007 world; and indeed, regardless of the fact that L no longer seemed to _care_ that he was Kira, he couldn't afford to have him hanging around any longer.

After all, he'd called them his little brothers on more than one occasion; in life, he'd been fiercely protective of information concerning them, refusing to speak at length about them, not even revealing their respective codenames.

Light couldn't afford to take the gamble that, being dead, L no longer cared about Mello and Near, because, in all honestly, he didn't believe it was true. Yes, L hadn't reacted much when Light had spat out "Near" during one of their earlier clashes, but L had always been like that. He was a more emotional person than he pretended to be, preferring to act as though he cared for nothing.

Light knew that about him better than anyone.

He needed to get rid of L before he could proceed in hunting down his protégés and nipping those particular problems in the bud before they bloomed into the threats they'd presented themselves as to him before; and on spending a few hours in the university library this week, between choosing books for his uninvited and unwelcome houseguest, reading various journals and information books on ghosts and hauntings, exorcisms and séances, legends of the undead…

It was mostly nonsense – ridiculous stories and speculations made by idiots who'd clearly never had an encounter with the supernatural. He'd never have wasted his time amongst this kind of literature (if it could even be considered that) if not for two very prominent reasons:

One: He knew that the reality-defying ideas of at least some of these things weren't completely ludicrous; Shinigamis, for example, given that he was the owner of a notebook with the power to kill with use of only a name and face that came with, as a Bonus Item, a Shinigami attached, completely Free of Charge.

Two: He was desperate.

As far kicking L out of his apartment went, he'd come up blank; though he _had_ learned a thing or two, perhaps about the nature of L himself. L had insisted that he couldn't return to Heaven, and maybe that was true – for all the other lies L had ever spun him, Light couldn't be sure that that was one of them – but on reading several of these books, he'd come across, several times, the notion that the 'spirit' of a deceased person haunting a specific place had convinced themselves that it was impossible for them to move on, therefore unintentionally preventing themselves from doing so.

In other words, such a spirit couldn't accept that it was in fact dead.

Light didn't know if that was the case with L – certainly he'd referred to himself as "dead" quite a number of times, and had spoken of Heaven very confidently, and seemed to realize that he didn't bleed or elicit body heat or need to eat…

Yes, Light couldn't argue with the fact that L certainly _knew_ he was dead.

But… that didn't mean that he had ever _accepted_ it.

It seemed odd that L hadn't haunted him in the previous timeline, but that was just one of many things that Light couldn't decipher about this entire situation, and he really didn't have any other cards to turn over at the moment; and so he decided to just try and deal with L this way.

To show him that he was really and truly dead; and if that didn't work, as lame as it sounded…

…He really _was_ just going to have to go Ghostbusters on him.

* * *

He'd never really noticed before how much like Ryuk L was – but it seemed ridiculously obvious now, the demands for apples aside.

The large, curious, unblinking eyes, with the ability to take a wicked glint into them without any kind of warning. The wild black spikes of hair framing the pale face. The way he slouched, taking quite a lot off his reasonably-tall frame. The way he curled up and observed everyone and everything around him, as though studying humankind with a detached, alien interest.

All those – and the fact that, apparently, no-one but Light himself could actually _see_ L.

Well, this was the conclusion that he'd come to, anyway. It was a Sunday, and Tokyo was relatively quiet, with only a few people milling about here and there on the streets; the train was much the same, the carriage they were in comprised of only six more people in addition to the pair of them, as opposed to the sixty-odd during weekday rush hour times.

Light rifled disinterestedly through a newspaper he'd found discarded on the seat next to him; off to his left, L was curled up in the corner, thumb in his mouth and his head tilted to an almost grotesque angle, black gaze fixated on the blur of the outskirts of the city rushing past the window.

His reasoning for no-one being able to see L was because no-one had looked at him.

At all.

And that was odd, as far as Light was concerned. While alive, people had never looked at L for the same reasons they looked at Light; they'd certainly been a sight while together, especially with the chain jingling merrily between their wrists.

Beauty and the beast, truly.

Frankly, L had never been all that presentable whilst alive; and being dead _certainly_ hadn't done his appearance any favors. And so if people had stared him for his dreadful appearance when he'd looked – on the whole – better than he did now, Light could only conclude that, having garnered no blinking, wide-eyed double-glances while shuffling slowly along after Light on the walk to the train station, people really just couldn't _see_ him.

Though maybe it wasn't the case. Maybe people were most respectful now than they'd been to poor L prior to his death – and certainly Light would feel a fool for leaning across the carriage and asking the man immersed in _Battle Royale_ if he could see that weird black-haired Caucasian fashion disaster lurking in the corner of the carriage, chewing on his thumb like a four year old kid – yes, the one that looked like a cross between a Halloween costume mannequin and a kicked puppy.

Whatever the answer was, the guy would surely – and quite rightly, all things considered – think he was a nutjob.

If it _was_ the case that L was invisible to everyone but himself – like Ryuk – Light couldn't say he was surprised. Not because he suspected that _L_ was a Shinigami, but…

Just Because.

He'd considered that L might bolt the second he was out in the open; but then decided that if L ran away, he didn't care. It solved his problem, so he wasn't going to chase him. In fact, he was rather hoping he _would_ run for it – but, to his dismay, L trailed along obediently after him after being pried from the bathroom and told that they were going out for a while.

Light didn't tell him where they were going and L didn't ask.

"Come on," he muttered, using that same soft tone he'd used for communication with Ryuk, when the train eventually shuddered to a halt. He pulled his coat further around himself against the razor November wind as he stepped out onto the platform; L hopping down after him in his usual white long-sleeved shirt and jeans and no shoes. The threats of pneumonia and broken glass had been met with a bored shrug, so Light hadn't pursued that matter – though knowing that neither of those things would harm this new L in any way regardless.

They rounded the block, and if L knew where he was, he didn't show it.

That was, until they reached the locked door of the building.

He stopped, and wouldn't come any further; playing his little Dracula trick again.

"I don't want to go in there, Light-kun," he said calmly, looking up at the skyscraper seemingly made of nothing but reflective windows.

"It's abandoned now, if that's your worry," Light replied as he stepped forward to unlock the door. "Dad shut the security system down. No-one's been it since… well, since you and Watari died."

L, his face expressionless, looked up at the old Kira Task Force Headquarters again, its monolithic bulk a protruding jut in the stony gray sky – once a beacon of hope in the Tokyo skyline, and now just a silent reminder of defeat.

"I don't want to go in there, Light-kun," he said again, his voice quieter, while his blank eyes continued to trace the tall outline of the building.

Light grabbed hold of his wrist and pulled at him, catching him off-balance before he could react and ground himself, successfully dragging him into the building – L resisted, balking and twisting between angry hisses of Light's name, but Light got him into the lobby, throwing him onto the dusty carpet in a heap.

"Are you afraid, L?" He mocked, looking scornfully down at him. "I can't think why _you're_ afraid of this place. It was built on your command with your money, and _you're_ the one who died here."

"I didn't want to come back here," L replied softly, picking himself up. "And I don't want to stay. This was unkind, Light-kun, even for you. I am leaving—"

"No." Light grabbed his wrist again, hauling him across the lobby towards the staircase. "This is the place where you died. If you should be haunting anywhere, it's here. You have to confront this, L. I don't think you can rest until you do."

"Light-kun cares about the peace of my eternal sleep?" L bit out in reply, borrowing Light's mocking tone for his own. "I somehow doubt that—"

"Look, you can rot in Hell for all I care!" Light snapped. "I just want you to go away and leave me alone—"

L pulled away from him on those words – and for a moment Light thought he was going to dart away across the lobby and out of the door and down the street as fast his bare feet would carry him. But he didn't – instead, fixing Light with a gaze that was suddenly unreadable, he swung away and went up the stairs on his own, spiraling upwards out of sight to the floor above.

Light was reminded of a dream he'd had once as he followed him in silence – a dream designed on the old Disney version of _Sleeping Beauty_, where L had taken Princess Aurora's place in ascending that twisted-candlestick staircase, deaf and blind to anything and everything but the one tiny green flitting star that led him to his impending death, suspended at the tip of a spinning wheel's spindle.

Deaf even to Light's pleading cries.

Though they were sentiments he'd often felt about L, he was sorry for the "Rot in Hell" comment. It was one thing to say that to someone who was still alive, but to say it someone whose death you were responsible for – whose expulsion from Heaven you were responsible for…

It was in bad taste, even for Light.

Maybe that was all that was left L now, if he were ever to return to his grave – _for_ him to rot in Hell.

Maybe _that_ was why he didn't want to go back.

What happened to people who were cast out of Heaven, after all? Angels kicked out of the Pearly Gates were sent to Hell, certainly, at least according to the Holy texts of the Abrahamistic faiths – but what did you _do_ with souls who hadn't earned their expulsion through wicked deeds…?

Light had walked this staircase a thousand times – it led directly up to the main office that had served as their investigation HQ, in particular during the Yotsuba inquiry. The entire place was as dark as an abandoned office block that's been without artificial light for three years, as a rule, generally is – sort of submerged in grey shadows, with dust and cobwebs to complete the gloomy, derelict décor. The place wasn't at all in disrepair but for the need of a good thorough clean, but it was cold and lifeless.

A perfect scene-setting for this gloomier act of an opera never performed.

He found L over near the chair he'd occupied on a daily basis whilst alive, his head tilted askew as he looked at it long and hard, not quite daring to go near it. Taking a breath to counter the suddenly-thick stale air, Light crossed the floor and passed L, who glanced at him out of the corner of his eye as he did so.

Grasping the back of the chair that had been his own during those investigations – performed as L's friend and lover rather than his enemy and destroyer – Light rolled it out, breaking the dusty cobwebs threaded like old, faded party streamers between the arms of it and the desk. Hesitating, he stepped around and sank into it, gripping the arms of it.

Without saying a word, and maybe not wanting to be outdone, L suddenly made to copy him – grabbing his own chair and pulling it out, then placing his hand onto the desk and starting to step up onto it, the way Light had seen him do a thousand times, in this very room, with that very chair—

"No, I can't." L stepped down again abruptly, pushing the chair back under and backing off and gripping his hands together as though it had burned him. He glanced at Light sitting strait rod in his own chair, his eyes wide. "Don't, Light-kun. Please don't."

The wild skittish look and unlikely plea caused the hair on the back of Light's neck to rise and then, after a second, blossom with sudden malevolent understanding.

"That chair." Light got up, carelessly kicking his own chair back under, his entire body focused on L now, a bare nerve ready to perceive any subtle change. "That's where you had the heart attack."

"Yes."

"Is that why you can't sit in it?"

L didn't respond this time, backing away suddenly as Light took a resolute step towards him – it was the first time the younger man had seen this new, malicious version of L thoroughly unsettled, and maybe he resolved there and then to twist it to his advantage. Light forced him back another few steps with his calculating eyes alone – but then L gave a sudden hiss and skittered off to the side, averting his horrified gaze from Light to the patch of carpet he had just avoided stepping on.

"And that…" Light crossed to that patch, kneeling down. "…This is where you fell, and I caught you. This… this is where you died. This is the _exact_ spot… where you—"

"Knew you were Kira. Realized that you didn't love me. Took my last breath." L supplied them all tonelessly, interrupting nonetheless with a certain sense of urgency, as though to cut Light off because he didn't want to hear what it was that he was truly going to say.

"Those all work," Light murmured; he glanced up at L to gauge his expression, but L's gaze had averted itself again, this time to the spot a little further over, up against the wall near the desk.

"That's where you raped me," he said flatly; sliding his gaze from it to the spot where Light knelt and then back again. "Interesting, really. The two places in this room where you hurt me are only a few feet apart."

Light had no answer to give to that, standing up again. That wall had been the violent spark plug for their unintentional journey, their clumsy yet beautiful freefall which had been precious enough to sacrifice for the good of the world.

For Kira's sake.

The physicality of it, of their loss, had to be verified. Had to been seen, and touched, and breathed in.

"There's somewhere else we have to go," he said softly, yet decisively, making L look at him again.

The odd, detached fear had crept back into his pale face again.

"I don't want to," he replied, immediately backing away.

"We have to." Light snatched at him, grabbing his wrist again before he got out of range. "We have to go, L. We have to go up there."

"I don't want to. Light-kun… Light-kun, please… I don't _want_ to…"

But that just sounded like the other protests he'd made in this room; over there, up against the wall, with the impending sentence of Light taking his virginity over his head; or down there, on the floor, screamed in silence in his head (_no, I don't want to, I don't want to die…!_); and so Light ignored them, hauling him out of the office and upwards anyway, and despite his protests (like those of a child being pulled by the hand by its mother from the playground), he didn't _really_ resist, letting Light half-drag him to the place in this building that shouldn't have been as painful to him as those where he'd been assaulted by his suspect and murdered by his suspect, respectively.

But, somehow, it _was_.

The bedroom that had been theirs smelt of thick dust and stale, shut-up air; and something else, something that was probably a faint remainder of the mingled perfume of _them_ they'd stained it with – the faded smell of sweat and semen and their own personal scents.

This room was forever stained with the fragrance of _being alive_.

The window that L had almost fallen from was bolted shut, near-opaque with grime and dust; the wardrobe that had held Light's impressive wealth of different designer garments was wide open, dark and empty; the desk that been commonly used as a shelf and less commonly used as a surface for L to bang Light senseless against had been removed.

The entire room was empty, in fact – but for the bed.

It had been stripped right down, but the mattress was still there on the naked metal frame, coated in a grey membrane of dust.

Light recalled lying alone on that bed, before it had been stripped, face buried in the bedsheets, as a means of clinging onto any concrete proof that L had ever existed for as long as he could before reality began nosing under the sheets in cold flashes of falling faces and closing eyes…

Now that they were in the room, L had calmed down, and didn't seem to have the same problem with the bed that he'd had with the chair or patch of carpet, despite his protests at Light forcing him to come up here; he pulled away from Light, heading straight for it and stepping up onto its dusty surface, bare feet leaving faint foot-shaped wounds in the grime itself. He lay down on it, covering himself in dust, though clearly not caring as the dead particles filtered down on him, and curled up on his side, his gaze on Light.

"I used to feel so safe curled up in this bed with you," he said quietly, taking his thumb to his mouth. "Happy, even. Isn't that stupid?"

Light gave a shrug, meant to convey "Whatever floats your boat"; but really it was only because, again, he had nothing to say to such a statement.

"It's amazing, really," L went on, twisting onto his back and lying flat out to look up at the dirty ceiling. "You were the only person that ever made me eager to get into bed…"

"You didn't want to sleep, though," Light said, pointing this out _because_ it was so obvious.

"Yes." L didn't look at him. "That's right. Not even you could make me interested in _sleeping_, Light-kun…"

_(No, he'd never meant that L was ugly – he'd never thought that, despite his own beauty. Odd-looking, yes, hence all the double-glances and nudges of passers-by, but not __**ugly**__. Light had never thought him ugly, never once, noting instead that there was something strangely exquisite about his twig-like frame, something perfectly clockwork about his awkward movements and positions, something artistic about the way the ebony spikes of hair fell around his face, something mathematical about the way he spoke and something infinite about the black of his eyes. Maybe a freak like L was the last person he ever thought he'd end up loving, but memories of Kira or no, Light had __**always**__ been rather arrogant enough to think himself something of a one of a kind, and L was certainly that too, and so maybe it was perfect that they should be together. Misa was small and slender and pretty, but there were a thousand other models just like her – there was __**no-one**__ like L, at least no-one that Light had ever met._

_It hadn't mattered behind this bedroom door, anyway; nothing had mattered when they collapsed onto this bed every night, locked together much more closely than the chain could ever keep them. It hadn't mattered when Light had pushed L – slighter of frame – against the mattress and nuzzled his face against his neck and whispered in his ear about where he was going to kiss him and in what order he could expect those kisses, sometimes running his fingers down his body to map them out manually, over his throat and chest and belly and lower, and L would squirm impatiently and push himself up against him, and it wouldn't matter that he'd accused Light of being a mass murderer three times on the way up from the taskforce office._

_Light had loved him once – there was no denying that. He'd loved him more than anything, wanted for nothing more than that white-as-snow skin and black-as-ebony hair, __**needed**__ it just to stop himself from falling apart, so badly that after L's death he'd… he'd even—) _

Light walked abruptly out of the bedroom just as L sat up and shook himself off; heading instead for the bathroom to look upon the mirrors that served as L and Mello and Near, and the third successor, whom Light admittedly knew nothing about at all…

On stepping in, he saw only four Light Yagamis – four Kiras…?

Yes, there'd been more than just he and Misa, he could remember that. There'd been a man, a loyal servant, named Mikami, and…

L joined him, still dusting himself off – and therein presenting him with those he had vowed to destroy before they could destroy him.

Four Ls.

The real thing lost interest quite quickly, glancing around at the mirrors only briefly before leaving the bathroom again – after all, he said he hated them, that they'd betrayed him, and _these_ were the very ones that had betrayed him, and Light reasoned that only thing stopping L from smashing them all was the fact that he had nothing to smash them _with_…

L seemed to have a predetermined direction of his own now, magnetized to a certain location, and Light found himself following him up to the roof. The helicopters were long gone, but the view of Tokyo was still there, sprawled out in much the same map as those two times before – once to watch the sun rise, and once in the rain, both to the weeping of bells in the distance.

There were no bells now – and likewise, no _aurora_ and no rain. The sky was gray and overcast, painting the city with a dull, pale blue wash, and wind was colder still up here, able to blow right through any clothing and bite at flesh till it went numb. Light shivered, but L didn't react at all, despite the fact that it whipped his hair around his snow-white face and tore at his loose clothes so that they flapped like flags.

They'd had meaningful conversations up here before – they'd talked about love and lies, about Kira and corporate power, about justice and belief…

Neither of them said anything now.

On the way back down from the roof, Light didn't look at L when he said;

"There's somewhere else… somewhere else we need to go."

And L didn't look at Light when he replied;

"Yes, I think that is best."

(It was a wonder, really, that it didn't escape his notice – but on passing back through the floor that had been theirs, Light glanced in briefly at the four mirrors in the bathroom through the open door, and saw that all four of them had cracks spider-webbed right across their surfaces.)

* * *

"I'm not Japanese."

It was the first thing L said after a long bout of the pair of them standing side by side in silence before the blank cross that marked L Lawliet's grave.

Light glanced at him briefly.

"I know. It's a bit obvious, at least that you aren't _fully_ Japanese… What are you, English?"

"It doesn't matter. What matters is that I wasn't born here."

Light didn't see exactly where he was going with this, so didn't say anything.

"So why was I buried here?" L finished quietly. "My grave is in a country that I really have very little connection with…"

"You were buried here because you died here," Light bit out, feeling as though he was talking to a child who kept asking "Why?" to every one of his answers.

Not to mention that it felt immensely weird to be talking with someone in past tense about their burial plot.

L didn't seem to have a comeback for this logic, instead pointing at the withered, near-dead roses laid up against the root of the stone cross.

"Did you bring those roses, Light-kun?"

"Yeah." Light's tone was a little defensive; he'd hadn't actively done it in this timeline, but he'd always brought roses to L's grave – gradually it had become a habit more than a mark of respect, but it was something he'd never ceased to do, even whilst warring against the dead man's heirs.

L was quiet again for a moment or two.

"What a remarkable actor you are," he said finally. "No wonder they have never again suspected you of being Kira."

He walked away, leaving Light alone by the blank gravestone to contend with an unnamable feeling.

Watching the dead detective trail away across the bleak graveyard for a moment or two, Light turned his attention back to the headstone, still trying to identify what the simultaneous swelling and sinking that he felt meant.

The L that haunted him… Was he the real thing? If Light were to haul the coffin six feet beneath him out of the ground and pry it open, would it be empty?

Or was the uncanny likeness of the man he had loved and hated and murdered only a replica – a puppet, made to wear L's appearance, a shell for his soul fashioned to look like his original body? Did the casket below still contain what remained of L's true body – surely now a cocktail of bones soaked in black coffin liquor?

The thought of digging up L's grave – empty or not – made him feel a little sick, and at this Light backed away from the headstone, looking around the deserted churchyard for the should-be inhabitant of said grave.

Why the hell did he spend so much time hanging around with things connected with death, anyway? Other Kiras, death gods, dead detectives…

Speaking of the latter, he was nowhere to be seen. Light hunted all over the churchyard for him, prepared at every instant for L to come springing out from behind a headstone in an attempt to make him jump, but L really appeared to have vanished.

The sound of a bell striking stole his attention, dragging it skyward towards the bell-tower of the church, looming ominously over the graveyard, more threatening than protective; a few jet-feathered birds – crows or ravens, he couldn't be sure – took flight from the roof of the tower at the striking of the first knell, unsettled by its demanding volume.

It struck three times, indicating three o' clock in the afternoon – and on the third toll, Light found himself looking at the church beyond it. Quite a small building, with a steep, pointed spire and beautiful Gothic architecture. Catholic, he'd presume, though he hadn't bothered to inquire which denomination of Christianity both church and churchyard were ever before, not even at L's funeral.

Could just as easily be Protestant, all things considered.

He pulled his coat tighter around himself as he navigated quickly along the winding path through the churchyard towards the entrance of the church itself – L must have gone in here, it was the only explanation for his sudden disappearance. There was nowhere else near enough that he could have gone without Light noticing.

The doors were heavy stained wood, but fairly easy to maneuver, and he slipped inside the dark church and let them close behind him. It was lit only by a few racks of remembrance candles and the grey November afternoon light coming in through the narrow, slit-like windows running along either side of the church. At the back, above the altar, was a huge, beautiful stained glass window, depicting a collage of different Biblical scenes, the centerpiece being the Crucifixion of Christ.

He noted, not without a small sense of discomfort, that Noah's Ark was on there, in the bottom left-hand corner.

Sure enough, he found L standing just beyond the altar, looking up at the window – a pale, solitary figure, somehow out of place here.

He found it odd that L had come in here of his own accord, given how clear he'd always made it – both before and after his death – that he was, by and large, an atheist. He'd even called the tales of the Old Testament – Noah's Ark in particular, in fact – "fairy stories"; and Light could recall him scorning Misa's outfits on more than one occasion, once they were out of her earshot. The crosses and crucifixes and rosaries and miniature portraits of the Virgin Mary strung onto delicate silver necklaces had never struck any awe within him.

"Did you hear the bells, Light-kun?" He asked absently when Light approached him quietly from behind, stopping a few feet short of him.

"Yeah."

"They're the same bells," L went on expressionlessly, barely acknowledging Light's answer. "The bells, I mean, that we heard that morning on the roof, and the day I died… they were from this church. Isn't that strange? That you chose to bury me in this churchyard, when I'd heard the bells of this very church that day?"

Light was struck speechless once more, never having realized this despite the numerous visits he had made to L's grave, but the death defying detective went on regardless:

"I wonder, though… I remember asking you, and you didn't answer… Was it a wedding that day, or… a funeral?"

"Maybe a baptism."

L glanced at him.

"Do they ring the bells for a baptism, Light-kun?"

Light shrugged.

"I don't know."

L looked away again, back up at the window.

"I think it was a wedding," he decidedly quietly.

There was silence between them for another long while; and then L glanced at Light once more and addressed him;

"Did you hope they would build churches like this for _you_, Light-kun?" The dead detective tilted his head. "Churches for the worship of Kira? Did you hope for stained glass windows as beautiful as these, proclaiming your words?"

Light didn't grace him with an answer, setting his jaw firmly in steely silence. He put his hands into his jacket pockets and turned away.

"Let's go," he bit out in a low voice.

L didn't provoke him for a reply, apparently _very_ satisfied by the silence he'd received instead, and followed him out of the silent church.

"Light-kun, did you notice," he said halfway down the winding churchyard path, sounding grimly cheerful, if that was at all possible, "that there was an apple on that stained glass window?"

"No, I didn't." Light didn't look at him; and after that they didn't speak another word to each other for the entire journey back to the apartment.

He was lying, though; of course he'd noticed.

It was the first thing he'd seen.

* * *

Later that night, with L safely locked in the bathroom, accompanied by three books, Light prepared for bed, pulling on his pajamas amidst an exhausted yawn.

The fact that he'd had _to_ lock L in the bathroom proved that his method of "Show the guy that he's _dead_" hadn't worked – L was still haunting him, and all he'd really achieved today was dredging up rather a few melancholy feelings within _himself_.

Perhaps it had been worth it to see L so unsettled by the room in which he had died, but Light didn't think he was going to be having an easy sleep tonight…

He pulled back the bedsheets and was about to clamber in—

When something round – a sort of dark, dull red – caught his eye, stark against the white of the mattress-sheet.

Blinking, he reached out and picked it up, feeling how hard it was against his palm.

It was the apple.

The apple he'd bought especially for L, almost a week ago. It was untouched, not a mark on it – but dry and shriveled, the once-ruby flesh now rippled with a darker red, losing its glow. It wasn't rotten, but it was probably getting there.

L had done it on purpose – asked for it with no intention of eating it, rather more interested in using it as a visual metaphor for their relationship and Kira's kingdom and _they themselves_, how all those things (or at least their intentions) had once been beautiful and now—

A deadly cocktail of rage and fear and despair arising within him, Light angrily threw the apple, watching it smack and flatten against the wall instead of bouncing off, before slowly sliding down the wall, a fermented smear tracking its progress all the way to the floor where it lay defeated with a rather neat dent in its once flawless side. Light got into bed without sparing it another glance.

In the morning, L caught sight of the red staining Light's eyes when the younger man wordlessly grabbed him by his shirt collar and dragged him across the bathroom tiles, tossing him out into the hall; and he smiled a pleasant enough smile and asked;

"Love apple?"

* * *

**RR:** Ah, what a delightful little jaunt down Memory Lane _that_ was…

O.o

News items:

**One:** We are racking up _Poison Apple_ fan art aplenty! Thankyou very much to all our contributing artists! If you'd like to check out the art, I manage the links on our DeviantART account because there are getting to be too many now. They're all linked up on the journal entry on our user page, a link to which is in my profile.

**Two: **WE NOW HAVE A FORUM. A _Poison Apple_ forum, to be perfectly precise. It's on my profile somewhere, under My Forums, I believe…

Now… that seems incredibly arrogant, to create a forum based on our fic. I'm sorry, I know it does. I didn't create it because I expect you all to go on there and have a massive discussion about how great our fic is. The true purpose of it is in the title – the incredibly unimaginative _Poison Apple Shoutbox_.

Hey, it does what it says on the tin. It's just that reviews are quite a difficult way of dealing with questions and criticism, etc, about the fic, and I figured a forum might be an easier way of doing it. If you have a question, a comment, a suggestion or a complaint about _Poison Apple_ you can post it in the forum. We'll probably add other discussions and other stuff later if people use the thing, but its main purpose is dealing with you guys, particularly questions or complaints. :)

Don't stop reviewing, though! We love your reviews so much it's unbelievable. Thankyou all _so_ much for all your lovely comments on our lowly little fic!

**Narroch:** You guys mean the world to us, honestly, every review we get is precious to us. You have no idea how much it encourages us to continue writing!

**RR: **And **three:** This is (mostly) unrelated, but I issue it as a warning.

I am addicted to _Pokémon_.

It's not even funny – I'm talking about the Gameboy game, you see. I presume the vast majority of you were into _Pokémon_ at some point, but now rarely think about it. Frankly, I haven't played the _Pokémon _Gameboy game in about five years – maybe more than that. _Pokémon_ is that kind of thing, a bit like a drug, where you're on it incessantly at every waking moment for around 3-6 months; then you gradually wean yourself off it; then go completely cold turkey and don't touch it for about a decade, all the while laughing nostalgically at parties about the good old days when you were just a young grasshopper and kids used to murder each other in the school yard over who stole whose rare metallic Charizard trading card; and then, thinking yourself cured, casually pick it up again years later thinking you might have a play around with it and before you know it…

_BAM!_ You're hooked all over again. O.o

I'm playing my beloved _Pokémon Yellow: Special Pikachu Edition. _I sat up 'til 4am last night obsessively doing Silph Co. and Saffron City. The members of my leading team are named after _Death Note_ characters (a Pikachu named Light, a Charizard named Mello, a Vulpix named Ryuzaki and an Vaporeon named Misa, respectively – incidentally, I don't yet have the Pokémon I want to name Near and Matt… O.o) and _ohmygodit'snoteven__**funny...**_

So, yeah, as a warning from someone who has haplessly fallen prey to the addiction all over again, I warn you:

If you don't want to waste hours upon hours of your time (time that is now far more important than it was when you were eleven and _Pokémon _was absolutely fucking _everywhere_…), don't touch that Gameboy and innocent little blue game cartridge.

Thankyou.

_(Dies laughing)_

Leave a review before you rush off to see the art/complain about _Poison Apple_/play _Pokémon_!

- RobinRocks and Narroch

P.S: Wow, shouldn't we get some kind of _award_ for AN-length…?


	19. Wammy's Whisper Club

Something ironic: Last chapter, quite a number of reviewers mentioned that, thus far, very little has happened concerning the plot of _Poison Apple_. It's all flashbacks and Light-angst and dead!L being a complete and utter bitch…

Ah, yes, this is a fact that we cannot deny, but never fear – _THIS_ chapter has plot. Lots of it.

Now, I say this is ironic because we didn't read your reviews and think "Heck, we better add some plot to this sucker!" and just stick some in to keep you happy. This original draft of this chapter was written before _Black Opera_ was even posted. This chapter was always next in line, therefore, so the timing of your demands for plot is kind of funny… :)

It should serve your plot needs, anyway.

And from the title you may have guessed that it does, in part, concern three certain Wammy's kids.

April's calendar girl on my _Disney Princess_ calendar: **Snow White.**

Thankyou to: **Mask of Mirage, Lostpharoah, tsuki aoi usagi, Neko-chwan, dreamsofpalmtress, Narni4eva, Shadowsole, :D, SOMA-King, Nubial Sheep, ElegantArrow 64, LawliPop, WhiteWolfCub, CanIInterestYouInThisLifeOfMin, DoYouFindMeDreadful, anja-chan, Dawn-at-Midnight, Tobi Tortue, hittocerebattosai, BakayaroManiac, Naomi, Hazel2Eyes, Moosemix, fouloldron, unsolvedenigma, xBakura's loveX, Mayura-Hikari-090, Reese, Tohru Daihikashousha, addictedreader09, oztan, ladyumbra, PikaNecoMico, Jenna, Fool4Sasuke33, Twilight Dim, Dark Chocolate Alchemist, arsg66, Angela and MiniMix, GhostofShadow, HouseMousa, Hikari Daeron, Nodame, Liviania, Moonya, wolvenlied, daxterandboxer, Lawliet's Angel, Rin Cho, lovova, Anwynd, MysteriousPenname, Strange and Intoxicating-rsa, zutaralover624, L-LawlietXxLight-Y, momijikk, Otaku Sage of Llamas, White Ivy, Kira-Kira, MiaoShou, Perdue, Layalas, Santri, professorkatze, enigmaSEVen, shira-minamoto14, CinderLa, Pancake-Breakfast, CheeseFaerieXXL, kyousuke21 **and I'm not sure if it was an anonymous review or not, but someone's name got cut off. It was the person ranting about how their cousin messed up their _Pokemon Blue_ game by using cloning cheats. Anyway, thankyou for reviewing!

Two last things before we begin:

ONE: Narroch finds the title of this chapter hilarious. O.o

TWO: My Pokémon are doing just fine, thankyou. :D To complete my team I now also have a Dratini called Near and a Rapidash called Beyond, which is a very fitting yet cruel name to give to a Pokémon that is permanently on fire…

Incidentally, I take no responsibility for any readers who now find themselves also addicted to _Pokémon_.

Wammy's Whisper Club

The best thing about a secret was that it was _secret. _

Knowing that a clandestine kernel of knowledge was nestled pleasantly in their hippocampus and no one else's held a small yet undeniable thrill for most people. It didn't really matter how relevant the information actually _was_; no, the excitement came from the complete possession of a thought, a variable that no one else could anticipate, and the giddy repercussions that might result from simply knowing. It was the absolute ownership of the information that gave it power. As soon as that possession was surrendered, even if disclosure was the information's intended purpose, it became _less_.

For a secret spoken aloud wasn't a secret at all anymore.

Having highly confidential secrets was not something new for Near. But he wasn't usually swayed by such baseless fixations; he didn't even consider secrets as anything but information. And for Near, information was simply a tool to be used and disclosed as needed to further his goals. He wasn't one to keep secrets simply for the sake of having a _secret_, especially when he was withholding said information from _himself_.

Perhaps his uncharacteristic hesitation rested on the fact that this wasn't just any secret – this was _L's_ secret. The last thing he had given him while he was still alive.

Those mirror-mirror eyes that had once belonged to someone else stayed fixated on the envelope; Near, curled on the floor of his bedroom, with the envelope balanced in his lap, its light weight as indiscernible as a bird perched on his leg. The packet was face-down so that he could gaze upon the neatly crossed paper seams and the tape that had been pressed over their intersection by L himself, and which had not even been peeled at since he had. It palpably displayed the age of the document, holding the crisp light color beneath a transparent seal while the rest of the paper aged to a darker brown; concurrently, the juxtaposition also gave proof of Near's own patience with prolonging L's final secret.

The slim fingers of one hand curled compulsively in his hair, twisting and stressing the locks in an idle habit long formed.

He'd been there for well over a single hour – two, perhaps three, barely moving at all, just coiling his hair absently and staring at the forbidden envelope and _thinking_. It was easy for him to become so thoroughly saturated in his own cognitions that he would lose track of time; it was only the small yet constant swirling and tugging that kept him tethered in the present, the stereotypy acting as a lone umbilical connection between mind and body.

His other source of speculation was beyond him on the floor, the glued-together jigsaw puzzle that was forever incomplete; the blatant gaps in the plane were like missing teeth in a smile, they drew his gaze, his thoughts and disrupted the complete image. The discrepancies made his scalp _itch_.

Before this, nothing that L had given to Near had ever eluded him for so long, and L had given Near _many_ gifts over the years – puzzles, usually; he'd always brought a puzzle for him every time he came back to Wammy's, each one more difficult than the last. From traditional puzzles with abstract cosmic images that were a strain just to look at, let alone construct piece by piece, to puzzles so austere and barren that there was nothing more than a singular dot to use as a reference for construction. He had even given Near creative puzzles with a challenging twist, such as a puzzle with no edges, or a double-sided puzzle with an image on either side of each piece…

Near had never been sure why this was – unlike Mello, he wasn't the type to read into the actions and conclude that it must be because he was L's favorite.

Quite frankly, the acts of generosity didn't necessarily mean that L even _liked_ him. As a child, he had always hoped that that wasn't the case – that L liked him at least a little bit – but he had never completely ruled the possibility out.

At any rate, he knew the real reason why L had given him these mind-bending teasers and puzzles that would make even the most brilliant of professors and scientists, who claimed to know the secrets of the mechanisms of the universe itself, tear out their hair and throw the thing across the room in frustration.

L was testing him.

L had once brought Mello some of those little green plastic toy soldiers – a long time ago, when Mello was very young but still as loud and boisterous as he was in adulthood – and then sat on the sofa drinking some coffee, watching him play with them.

Watching, with interest, as Mello arranged them into groups that haphazardly attacked one another, leaving most "dead".

L had once brought Matt a game for the Playstation he (sometimes) shared with Mello; a racing game, and had loitered in the doorway while Matt excitedly loaded it up.

Watching, with interest, as Matt chose a car, zoomed off at the starting gun, and then went careening off the track and smashed into a stand of spectators within the space of a minute.

(L himself hadn't been all that old back then; perhaps eighteen or nineteen, yet still already an extremely decorated and prestigious detective._ The same age as Kira_.)

Watching Matt and Mello only ever resulted in L raising one dark eyebrow before ambling away with his hands in his pockets; watching Near, on the other hand, always resulted in L raising _both_ eyebrows and then smiling when the small pale child unfolded himself, got up and brought him over the completed puzzle.

Yet here before him was a puzzle that lay incomplete – a puzzle incomplete for almost four years now. Three blank spaces glaring upwards from the smooth white surface, adorned with the name of the dead man from whom Near had received this jigsaw.

A white oblivional canvas, adorned with and known by only a single stark letter – with three empty spaces, even now still waiting to be filled to complete the entire puzzle.

Reflective of L himself.

There was a soft knock at Near's door.

"Come in," Near said, not bothering to raise either his voice or his head, though giving a little more gas to the pilot light his body ran on while the bulk of his energies were focused in the mental realm.

Roger opened the door inwards, standing on the threshold without saying a word for a moment or two; Near still didn't offer him his attention, coiling his hair distractedly as his only sign of life.

"Near." Roger crossed the floor, stepping around Near's toys and half-constructed block forts and card towers; and, with difficulty accompanied by a small intake of breath and a hand to his spine, knelt on one knee to around Near's level.

"I want you to have this," he finished; holding something out to the pale boy.

Near's black mirror eyes flickered upwards, glancing at the offered gift.

It was a book.

Near reached up and took it, allowing Roger to straighten up again with a small sigh of relief and an audible _pop _from any number of joints; Near rested his chin on his propped knee while holding it in front of himself to read the title.

_Legends of Popular Greek Mythology_

"It's old," Near observed in disinterest, opening the cover to see the print date. "Why have you given me this, Roger?"

"It was L's," Roger replied, beginning his maneuvers out of the room again. "He gave it to me a very long time ago. I thought you might like to have it, being his last heir here at Wammy's House."

Near gave a silent nod, running his fingers over the cover of the musty book, feeling the ingrained dust and the grooved letter of the title.

"How old was he when he gave this to you?" He asked expressionlessly after a moment.

Roger paused and turned, adjusting his glasses as he thought for a moment.

"Around thirteen, I believe." He glanced at Near again – avoiding his glinting black eyes. "Younger than you, at any rate."

Near gave another meditative nod, filing the fact away in its appropriate mental file for later perusal.

Roger left the room, closing the door behind him; but then, just before it _clicked_ completely shut, he opened it again, leaning back into Near's bedroom.

"He marked his favorite one," he said, nodding at the book. "The red sweet wrapper…"

Near said nothing, and after a moment, Roger left properly, pulling the door behind him.

So now he had another gift from a dead man – one passed down to him from someone who'd received it many years prior to Near's own coming to Wammy's House.

Laying the envelope that had taken up all of his attention for a good portion of the afternoon aside, Near opened the book, feeling the well-worn pages beneath his fingers – the paper was coarse, yellowed, smelling bitter yet not unpleasant in a common sign of age. He carefully flicked through it until he found the creased red foil rectangle wedged into the heart of the book – so long pressed into this shape by a thirteen year old L that the red dye had worn off on the folds, the silver underneath glinting in straight pure lines, like the shot of precious metal vertically down a British bank note as a sign of authenticity.

Near glanced down at the page, reading _Hercules Defeats the Hydra_.

He knew the story – the Hydra was a monster with the capability of growing three new heads should the original be cleaved from its body. He could clearly see the comparison between this tale and his, Mello's and Matt's roles as L's heirs – maybe that was what Roger _wanted_ him to see.

Maybe that was _why_ he'd given it to him, really.

Near closed the book, gently laying it on the floor – picking up in its place the envelope again.

Though he stared blankly at it no more.

Maybe it was because of the symbolism of the book, maybe not; but, with a single decisive action, Near tore off the tape.

* * *

Murder had a red door.

The color was deeper than the arterial spray of fresh screams; it was the darker congealed coating afterwards that gave the door its hue, life blood soaked into sand. It was the aftermath of the act which made the things on the other side of the door unbearable. Passing through the portal was easy, and in Light's case he stumbled through accidentally – the door had swung open almost as if to welcome him and he tripped past the dripping entry. It was only when the blood red door clicked shut behind him and he was trapped on the other side that it became hard.

And _locked_.

And while Light took to mass killing like a duck to water, he still remembered those flickering first moments when he became something he hadn't been before. A _murderer_. The feeling of transition, of confusion, and a novel sensation that he was leaving his boring, yet comfortable, old self behind, becoming something he wasn't sure he could define. And for a moment, when he buried himself under the blankets of his bed and trembled like a little boy, the conviction of his want to be _himself_ was overwhelming, almost painful.

The instability was short-lived as he built himself up, hardened his heart, and took the burden of murder as his own under the veil of Justice. But he could never forget the feeling of losing one's place in the world, of losing one's own _self_.

He imagined that was how it felt for L now, condemned to live in an indescribable, unimaginable realm – though 'halfrealm' or 'numbness' might be better words to describe it. Having put himself back together, stitching himself up with the strong red thread of Kira's rhetoric, he felt more contemplative about L, about why things weren't exactly _working out_ between them.

He stalked out of the bedroom, feeling more certain than he had in days, feeling more optimistic than he had since his failed "exorcism" attempts, and found L standing in the darkened kitchen staring out the window over the sink.

"What is it going to take for you to leave me alone?" Light asked, without any preamble to clutter his question, posing it more as an open-ended invitation for dialog rather than a demand with a single correct answer. At this point Light knew he needed more information before he could proceed, and L was the only available source that could mend his disjointed perspective; the dead detective didn't look at him.

"I'm not here because I want to be," he answered, sounding rather weary in his explanation, completely ignoring Light's desperation for a higher viewpoint of the whole mess.

The intentionally standard answer made an argument brew in Light, and he changed tactics in order to continue the conversation;

"But you don't have to torment me the way you've been taking such pleasure in doing!" The younger man blazed. "I'm sick to _death_ of this sadistic crap from you, L!"

L said nothing – though Light could have sworn he'd seen a brief ghost of a smirk appear on his face in the reflection of the dark kitchen window.

"_Ryuzaki_!" He snapped, knowing that that, at least, would get his attention.

"Please don't call me that," L replied woodenly. "It's not my name."

"What, does it remind you of what it was like to be _alive_, Ryuzaki…?" Light mocked, intentionally grating at the sore spot.

From his view of L's turned back, Light thought he saw a tremor at that, an internal seism of the heart, but L was so good at masking any external cracks and fissures that it was like a perfected sleight of hand. Instead he turned and trained his dead eyes on Light, tired sarcasm pulling a wry smile.

"If only I could _feel,_" he said, with the most regret in his voice Light had heard since his talk of heaven – though failing to directly answer his question. "But I have forgotten what it's like… I _was _normal, wasn't I? I _did _exist like everyone else?"

"Yes, of course," Light answered quietly; then, realizing what he had said to _L _of all people, tactlessly rephrased his answer. "Well, not _normal_ exactly, but you _were_ alive. Human."

L's smile dropped at that, and he fell into his monotone rut of speech, the words sounding perfunctory, even when their meaning was steeped with a depth that Light hadn't intended to delve into.

"There is no 'of course'. I can't believe it that simply. I can't identify with that human form anymore. He's gone, I can't remember him, _I can't even imagine him. _It's like something's been scooped right out of me, right from the center… It's like what they do to cadavers, isn't it? They scoop out the center, the spinal cord, they _pith _them. That's what I am, _pithed_!" His tirade had grown with each choppy sentence until his eyes had widened to perfect black circles, and his voice was tilted on a hysteric edge.

Light didn't argue, being slightly taken aback by L's sudden regression, and also for the fact that he had to agree with him, in some sense he _was_ 'pithed', disembodied, a sort of wraith. He had lost the fundamental organic mooring of identity and such depersonalization of his own humanity after being forced back into the mold was bound to leave its mark.

"No, it… it doesn't matter, anyway…" L breathed, his voice shuddering a little; he wrapped his arms tightly around himself, as though holding himself together at the seams, as Light had seen him do before. "…_It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter_…"

"What doesn't matter…?" Light asked warily, not approaching him. Though he was the one who had instigated the reaction, Light was uncomfortable with such an open display of pain and regret; it had undercurrents of manipulation that he didn't trust, even if L's distress was genuine.

"There are pieces missing," L said decisively, looking at the kitchen floor, "but…"

He looked up at Light again through his ebony hair.

"…It doesn't matter anymore, does it?…"

He let his hands fall away from himself, leaning back against the sideboard. Light could see the hysteria draining away again as quickly as it had come, the emotional outburst being as unexpected and abrupt as a flash flood to begin with. He watched as impassivity filled the cracks once more, leaving only the stony detective that was his obstacle instead of the betrayed human that was his lover.

"Light-kun will play Chess with me," L said at length, looking at the kitchen ceiling as if the exchange had never happened.

"No thanks," Light bit out, turning on his heel to walk out again; having won no argument here. Though despite his failed interrogation attempt, he _had_ gained something; managed to capture another elusive glance beneath L's mask.

"I don't recall voicing it as a request," L mused blandly, tilting his head up again so that his black eyes could meet with Light's chocolate ones. And then, again without waiting for Light to retort, continued; "Come. I have taken the liberty of setting up the board in the front room…"

"I said _no_!" Light snapped as L sauntered past him, his usual icy chill coiling around him like an aura.

L paused, glancing back at him.

"I remember saying that once," he said emotionlessly. "You took little heed of it, incidentally."

He reached out his white spider-like hand, grabbing Light's wrist – fingers tightening around it and digging into the skin like icy metal bolts.

"Come along," was all he said, pulling Light out of the kitchen.

Light had wanted to get out while he was still ahead, while he still had L's trembling form fresh in his mind, and before the fickle detective could do something malicious to redeem that tiny shattering Light had witnessed. But he didn't have the strength to resist, because he knew that L had a plan with this arrangement, since the board had already been set. And once L set a pre-thought out design in motion it was easier to just allow himself to be hauled along behind him the way he'd been whilst attached to him via a handcuff and six-foot chain.

Light knew that the façade of a chess game could just be another roundabout way of L taunting him, as so many of his other recent stunts had been. But any premeditated interaction also held the potential for information, for a real conclusion if L ever decided to give him that. The slim chance was better than the nonexistent one, so when L let him go when they arrived in the front room, leaving him to rub his wrist against the chill left imprinted into his very skin, he didn't try to back out.

"You may choose whichever side you like," L said dully, gesturing towards the board he'd set up pristinely on the coffee table. "It doesn't bother me."

Light eyed him warily; because this was L and, dead or not, there was no doubt at all that he was waiting, ready to pounce on whichever choice Light made.

White or Black.

He hesitated, knowing that the dead detective was watching his every move – he knew which L wanted him to choose, and resolved not to disappoint him.

"White," he said complacently, going to that side of the table and sinking to the floor, folding up his legs underneath himself.

L smiled delightedly – a wicked, detached grin – and went to the black side, settling for the crouch he'd preferred in life.

"White moves first," he said pleasantly, dancing his fingertips over the back row of his own pieces – pausing at the king and queen and briefly knocking them together.

Light averted his gaze from him, selecting a pawn and sliding it forward two squares.

"Ah, freeing up your left knight?" L murmured, watching him do it.

"Don't commentate on all my moves!" Light snapped irritably. "Just shut up and take your turn."

"Very well." L pushed one of his own pawns forwards. "I'm going to bring my—"

"Don't commentate on your own moves either!" Light growled, struggling to ignore L's instigations.

"You wish to play in silence, Light-kun?" L tilted his head.

"That would be nice," Light bit out, flicking his second pawn into place.

"Alright, then. Neither of us will speak." L silently moved his own second piece across the board. "Though if I may ask two questions before we resolve to embark upon complete silence?"

Light gave a terse nod, not looking at him.

"Firstly, why is it that you chose white? Purely _because_ white moves first?"

"Yeah," Light replied, still not glancing at him.

L smiled, signaling the beginning of the analysis Light knew was coming.

"I don't think that's true."

"Then it isn't."

L's smile became more curious – interest piqued by the way in which Light was simply agreeing with him rather than arguing.

"Let's be honest," L said softly, "the theory of "He who strikes first wins" isn't true. I myself proved it as having no factual value, do you recall? There was that tennis match, to begin with. I struck first, and I lost to you. That is a practical example. But in our personal, ongoing battle… I also struck first, didn't I? With Lind L. Tailor…? And ultimately…"

"…You lost," Light finished, glancing up at him through his hair.

"Yes, I suppose that is true. That is certainly true."

"What's the point of this, L?"

"Just an observation. On both occasions, I was the first to strike, and on both occasions, I lost to you. I do not believe that you, therefore, hold value in being the first to have a turn, even in something as trivial as a chess match. You have aptly proven that you do not need to be given such an advantage to emerge victorious. So, then… the _white_…?"

"You _wanted_ me to choose white."

"I had hoped so, I admit."

Light bit his lip in silence for a moment, sliding another of his pieces forward across the board.

"…Kira," he said finally. "That's why, isn't it, L? You _did_ want me to choose white, simply as an emblem of my arrogance…"

L smiled indulgently.

"What an impeccable way of putting it, Light-kun."

"_White_…" Light lifted up his white king for a moment, glancing at it. "…As a symbol of my justice… You wanted me to choose it so that you could mock me, smirk at the fact that I would _dare_ to choose white—"

"Ah, now… There is nothing wrong with _black_, now, is there…?" L toyed with a strand of his own hair as he said it – that same shiny shade as the pieces glinting in the narrow lamplight.

_(Chess board. Chess pieces. Black as ebony. White as snow—)_

"What was your other question?" Light snapped, changing the subject.

"Oh, that." L released his hair and swiftly moved another piece before pausing to answer. "It was only a matter of vague interest, really. I just wondered if you might be inclined to play for prizes…?"

Light glanced sharply at him, eyes glinting amber.

"…Prizes?" Those same lovely eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What on _earth_ would I want from _you_ as a prize for winning?"

L reached across, picking up the white king that Light himself had been examining only a moment before – holding it up in his odd way.

"…I'll tell you something," he said finally. "Not _anything_. _Something_."

"Like what?" Light asked suspiciously.

L smirked, putting the king back.

"You have to win to find out what. But I think it may interest you. You will recall, of course, that I know things that you do not…"

"And what if _you_ win?"

"I don't know." L smiled sweetly. "What would you _like_ to give me, should I be victorious?"

"A one-way ticket back to your grave," Light spat automatically.

"That is wishful thinking alone, and a prize that you know, by now, you are incapable of producing."

"Well, what do you _want_?" Light asked exasperatedly. "What could I give you?"

"I…" L's eyes glazed for a moment, and he fell silent.

"L…?"

"There's… _one_ thing," L whispered, more to himself, "but… but I_… I can't ask you for it_."

"What? What is it?" Light pushed, curiosity burning brightly in the words.

L gave a sudden shake of his head, as though snapping himself out of a trance.

"No, it's nothing. Forget I said it. It's something that I couldn't ever ask you for, so I won't tell you."

He picked up a knight and tapped it across the board decisively; then looked up at Light, whose mouth was open a little as though he _wanted_ to say something but had failed to formulate the words in his mind.

"Light-kun," L said softly, snapping his fingers. "Your move."

—

Light could see how to win; how to force L into a definite Checkmate, but…

It would involve sacrifice.

He suspected that L had read this move by now too – knew he had no other choice but to move his king into Checkmate two turns from now.

Taking a small breath, Light took up his queen and pushed her to her destined place to die; and, as planned, L took her with a bishop.

He dangled the white queen between his thumb and forefinger, swinging her back and forwards by her tiny crown like the pendulum of a clock, as Light deftly put him into Checkmate.

"You win, Light-kun," L said blandly.

Light nodded.

"…But you lost your queen." L held her up to prove his point.

Light shrugged.

"It doesn't matter. She's just another piece – nothing more than a powerful pawn."

"Indeed." L looked at the white queen again – then picked up his black one and placed them side by side. "It's ironic, don't you think? The queen is actually the most powerful piece on the board – much stronger than the king himself. If you're foolish enough to lose her too early in the game, it's fair to say that you've lost already—"

"My _prize_, L," Light interrupted waspishly, _knowing_ what L was referring to. He snatched his queen back – then opened his palm to glance at her, gazing hard at L. "Unless… what you're going to say has to do with—"

"Amane-san?" L shook his head. "I apologize for getting your hopes up."

"Then _what_ the hell—?"

"Your memories." L leaned across the sparse chessboard. "You will have realized by now, Light-kun, that your memory is somewhat… incomplete. That is to say, there are certain things that have happened to you in a timeline previous to this that you cannot recall, though you are aware that you _should_ have memories of them."

Light stared at him, aghast.

"H-how do you… you know…?"

L tilted his head.

"I know a lot of things now, Light-kun." He smiled. "It's ironic, really. I thought myself so well-informed whilst alive, but really, I was very ignorant. I knew more than most humans do, but frankly, humans don't know very much at all. They are not as intelligent as they give themselves credit for, that is for certain. Though you shouldn't envy me – _you_ should know more than anyone what kind of price I had to pay to be elevated above human understanding. You were the _cause_ of that price, after all."

Light could only give a small, tightlipped nod.

"Regardless, I would like you to recall the rules of the Death Note," L went on. "And I must tell you, of course, that I am well-informed about such matters now. So, knowing you no longer have any information to hide from me concerning the notebook, what of the Shinigami Eyes, Light-kun?"

"You can make a deal with the attached Shinigami for Shinigami Eyes, which allow you to see the true name and lifespan of any living human, even if it's a photograph," Light rattled off flatly.

L nodded appreciatively.

"You never traded for them, though Misa-san did twice," he said thoughtfully. "And the deal itself…?"

"Half of your remaining lifespan goes to the donating Shinigami in return for the eyes," Light said uneasily.

L held up the forefinger of his right hand, smiling again.

"_Half_," he repeated softly. "There is your answer, Light-kun."

"Half…?"

"A trade for Shinigami Eyes employs the penalty of half the human's remaining lifespan," L said. "A trade for a life regained by the user of a Death Note employs the penalty of half the human's memories. There are things that have happened in your life that you have given no thought to of late, but that is because you cannot remember them."

Light blinked a few times.

"But… only half my memories…?"

He watched L stand up; leaning across the board himself.

"Why is the penalty for the eyes such a great one – half of your _life_ – and the penalty for getting your whole life _back_ so small?"

"Would you call it a small penalty?" L asked expressionlessly, looking down at him curiously. "Your memories are the imprint of who you are. They create your identity. The knowledge of who you are, and who your friends and family are, and all the things that have happened to you… Those are worth more than a name, Light-kun, and they are worth more than a life cut in half. It is not someone else's job to know who you are – it is yours, and if _you_ cannot remember… then who are you?"

"But I _can_ remember!" Light snapped. "I _know_ who I am! I'm Light Yagami, I'm Kira…! _I know who I am, L_!"

"But you don't know who Mello and Near are," L replied simply.

Light had no answer, floored by the fact that L had mentioned his heirs on his own; and L shrugged and turned away, walking out of the room.

"I never made a deal, though," Light said softly, looking down at the chessboard. "_L_…! I didn't _make_ a deal to get my life back!"

"Of course you didn't," L agreed absently, not turning to him as he made for the door. "How could you have? You were in Mu…"

Here, however, he did pause; hand on the doorframe, looking back over his shoulder at Light, who was still sitting at his side of the chessboard.

"I'm sorry to be so secretive, Light-kun," he said, not sounding particularly sorry at all; but with a faint, half-sad smile on his snow-white face even so. "Even the knowledge of the true name of the man you slept with was not yours to possess until after his… I mean, _my_ death… Perhaps the blame lies solely with the place where I grew up, but regardless… It is not my place to tell you what it is that I cannot ask you for. All I can say is… truly, maybe it was always predestined that I would lose to you."

"And why's that?" Light asked bitterly, examining his lost queen in disinterest; and L spoke even as he trailed away;

"Because the only prize that would be worth anything to me… is the very same one for which I can never ask."

* * *

Matt glanced up irritably from under the desk, where he was busy setting up a fourth modem; pulling his goggles up onto his forehead to hold his fiery hair out of his eyes. The incessant, demanding jingle of a cell phone was going right through his skull – it had been ringing for a while now.

"Hey, is that your phone or mine?!" He called to Mello, who was in the next room poring over back issues of Japanese newspapers.

"What?!" Mello yelled back in disinterest.

"I _said_—"

Matt cut himself off with an annoyed sigh, knowing Mello wouldn't hear him over both the phone and his own internal "Must-catch-Kira-before-Near" mantra. He clambered out from under the desk, crossing the room and leaning into the kitchen, where Mello was sitting at the table with newspaper clippings layered all over the surface of it, not to mention the heaps piled on the floor and work surfaces.

The ringing was coming from in here, though Matt couldn't seem to locate the offending phone itself since it was most likely buried in the newspaper leaf litter.

"Oi, whose phone is that?" He demanded, chucking his screwdriver at Mello's head.

"Ow!" Mello started violently at being hit on the skull with the hard plastic handle of aforementioned screwdriver, whirling in his seat to glare murderously at Matt. "Matt, what the _hell_?!"

"Will you answer that phone?" Matt snapped, looking around for it. "It's driving me _mad_…"

"You answer it. It's yours." Mello went back to his newspapers, blonde hair brushing across his face with the downward motion as he rubbed at the tender spot on his head; and as he did so, the caller finally rang off. "There, it's stopped now. Stop bitching and get back to work."

Matt retrieved his screwdriver from the floor and stalked out of the kitchen – and, as though waiting for him to leave, the phone began to ring again right on cue.

"For fuck's _sake_, Mello…!" Matt spun on his heel, throwing the screwdriver down and crossing to the counter – the general direction of the ringing. With a vein visibly pulsing across his temple, he began to rifle furiously through all the clippings and spreads, searching for the phone buried somewhere beneath them all.

"_Matt_—!" Mello stood up, slamming his hands down on the table as papers and documents flew by his head. "I organized those specifically in—"

"Here," Matt interrupted, finding the phone under a pile of double-page spreads on Kira somewhere near the toaster. "Here it is… And it's yours. Unknown number." Matt threw the blonde's phone at him; Mello caught it deftly, appearing surprised nonetheless. He wasn't one to give out his number to many people, his paranoia born from an acute awareness of precariously severed Mafia connections, ones that would prove dangerous if ever reconnected.

"_Answer_ it, for Christ's sake…"

Matt started out of the kitchen again as Mello flipped open the phone and brought it up to his ear.

"Hello?"

Matt only halted in his tracks when he heard Mello utter "…_Near_?!" in a strangled, hushed tone.

"Near?!" Matt repeated on dashing back into the kitchen; just in time to see Mello drop the phone, wide-eyed.

Matt dived on it, bringing it to his own ear.

"Near?" There was silence, and Matt banged the device against the table a few times for good measure, attempting to regain signal by beating the phone into submission. "Near…hello…? Mello, I think you've broken it…"

"No," Mello answered dazedly. "He's gone. He said to go to the Wammy's House intranet database."

Matt blinked at him as he straightened up, tossing the since-forgotten phone onto the kitchen table.

"What, now?"

Mello nodded, glancing at him.

"You can do that, right? Get onto it from here?"

"I can hack into it, sure," Matt replied airily, already starting out of the kitchen. "I made sure to leave myself a backdoor before tailin' it out of Wammy's. Give me five minutes and we'll be in."

He was gone, already throwing himself into his computer chair and grabbing his mouse; Mello snatched up his abused phone, shoving it into his pocket as he followed, rosary swinging like a pendulum across his chest.

"Any idea what he wants us to do on here?" Matt asked as Mello stopped behind his chair; the redhead pulled his goggles off completely and tossed them behind him, shaking his hair back into shape.

"He said he'd call back in a moment." Mello gave a frustrated sigh, leaning up against the computer desk to glare at his own tightly clenched fist. "What the fuck…? Are we supposed to believe he's got some kind of _lead_ on Kira, because… I don't buy it, Matt. If he had, he wouldn't be ringing us up to share it with us. Near's not like that."

"Don't I know it," Matt muttered, his eyes locked on the screen as he deftly typing hack codes into his system. He paused, glancing up at the blonde and then shrugged. "I dunno, Mello. I suppose there's an ulterior motive."

Mello smirked dryly, resentment obvious.

"Isn't there always with Near?"

Matt snorted.

"Bit rich coming from you, Mafia Boy," he bit out, slamming down on _Enter_. "There, we're in."

As though on cue, the phone in Mello's pocket began to ring again.

"I don't even know how the _fuck_ he got my number," Mello muttered savagely, pulling it out and flipping it open. "Near?"

"I would prefer simply 'N' at this point," came Near's expressionless reply. "I will refer to both you and Matt collectively as 'M'. That said, I do not intend to speak with you for long."

"What the hell do you want, _N_?" Mello snapped, his teeth already starting to grind together in irritation.

"Only the answer to a simple question, M," Near replied pleasantly. "Matt is on the Wammy's system already, I see. Good. I will communicate with you via that in a moment. Ask Matt to connect us."

"_N_ says to connect us up to him," Mello spat, taking the phone from his ear to address Matt; taking special care to viciously intone the 'N' part.

Matt gave a silent nod, turning his attention back to his computer. He was used to Mello's irrational anger when it came to the touchy subject of Near, so his volatile behavior didn't faze him now. In fact, he internally congratulated Mello on being so civil, though he had no death wish to utter this sentiment aloud.

"Done," he said after a few clicks.

"He's done it," Mello relayed icily to Near.

"Good. And now my question…" Near paused for a moment. "Years ago, before you left Wammy's House, and before L died… Did he ever give you an envelope that he told you not to open?"

Mello blinked rapidly, almost dropping the phone again as his fists tightened involuntarily.

"An envelope…?" He repeated faintly; and on this, Matt glanced sharply at him.

"M…?"

"Yes." Mello reigned in his shock. "Yes, L gave me an envelope. I've never opened it. I thought I was… the only one he'd given one too."

"He gave me one too," Near replied drolly. "Very well, I—"

"Wait, N," Mello interrupted, glancing at Matt, who had just hit him on the arm. "What, Matt?"

"L gave _me_ an envelope as well," Matt replied quietly. "He told me not to open it, and I thought that _I_ was the only one he'd given it to…"

Mello blinked at him, taken by surprise at this revelation all over again.

"N, Matt says he was given one too," he said briskly.

Near paused for a moment as all the facts slipped neatly into place.

"How interesting," he said finally. "But then… yes, it makes sense, for _three_…"

There was a _click_, and Near was gone.

Mello threw down the phone in frustration, angry that even that small token L had given him had to be shared with Near.

"Why didn't you tell me about your envelope?" He snapped at Matt, venting his contempt.

Matt blinked at him, staring levelly into the face of doom and not being very impressed by what he saw.

"Because L told me not to tell anyone that he'd given it to me." He replied nonchalantly, arching an eyebrow. "Why didn't _you_ tell _me_?"

"Because L told me not to tell anyone that he'd given it to me," Mello responded dryly as his fuse was cut short by the logic. He ran a hand through his gold hair, and released a long breath, attempting to soothe over his frazzled nerves. "I guess it's safe to assume that he told Near the same thing…"

Matt gave a small shake of his head.

"I never _did_ have any idea what that guy was up to…" The redhead looked back at the screen just as a small tab appeared, marked with a single gothic capital 'N'. "Looks like Near wants to use the Wammy's database as an instant messaging system to communicate with us."

"Is that safe?" Mello muttered dubiously, leaning closer.

Matt nodded confidently.

"Safer than a phone conversation. If this was a simple messaging system on the World Wide Web I'd be extremely concerned, but the Wammy's House database is a protected intranet service. Very secure – one of the very best anti-hacking systems I've come across."

"Yet _you_ still got into it in less than two minutes."

Matt smiled sweetly and tapped the screen.

"Well, I'm a special case. At any rate, anything that goes between us and Near on here is impossible to be traced by anyone outside of the Wammy's database – and let's face it, very few people have access to this. Roger is quite honestly the only legitimate user – L and Watari are dead, and both Near and I shouldn't be using it for this purpose…"

He clicked on the tab.

"Let's see what Near has to say about these envelopes, anyway."

The 'N' replaced itself with Near's message, reading simply:

_N: Do you both have access to your envelopes?_

Mello and Matt glanced at one another.

"I have mine here," Mello said softly. "Do you?"

Matt nodded, then turned away and swiftly typed a reply;

_M: They are both here_

Near was quick to respond, writing:

_N: Are they unopened?_

_M: Yes_

_N: Please retrieve them and open them. I have opened mine and on learning that you both were given envelopes by L, I believe that there is a message meant for our unraveling._

"Where's yours?" Mello asked after quickly reading Near's last and longest response.

"In my toolbox in the bedroom," Matt replied; and when Mello shot him an odd look, added; "There's a false bottom to it."

"Alright, I'll get them." Mello left for the bedroom, and Matt typed a reply.

_M: M has gone to get them_

_N: Good. _

There was a long pause, and then Near posted another response:

_N: I believe L intended this as a precaution… For three to rise in his place instead of just one. If my suspicions are correct and he has left us a clue, it is clear that he meant for us to unravel it together. It would be impossible for any of us to work it out alone. _

"What the hell is he jabbering about?" Mello snapped, reading the reply over Matt's shoulder on his return; both brown taped envelopes, worn by age, clutched in his hand. "Since when is _he_ the almighty oracle, predicting this and that…?"

"I think he has a point," Matt said blandly, taking his envelope from Mello. "Well, maybe. This whole envelope thing is… _odd_, even for L."

Mello gave a nod, holding his up and preparing to tear it open—

But then he stopped, and threw out an arm to prevent Matt from opening his too.

"Wait a moment," he muttered blackly, his jaw jutting out in stubborn defiance; just passively following Near's orders _grated _on him. He leaned over the redhead to type his own message:

_M: First, out of interest, tell us what was in __your__ envelope_

Matt leaned in close too as Near's reply appeared in the small white text box:

_N: A piece of a jigsaw puzzle. I suspect that your envelopes will also contain jigsaw pieces, but please open them and confirm this_

Matt blinked, glancing at his envelope again.

"A jigsaw piece…?" At this he tore the tape off his, shaking out the contents as Mello followed his lead.

Each of them found themselves the owner of – as Near had predicted – a single tiny piece of a plain white jigsaw puzzle.

_M: Jigsaw pieces, as you thought_

Matt leaned back after typing this, examining the tiny piece; off to his left, Mello was leaning against the desk, holding his piece in much the same way as L had always favored, frowning at it.

_N: What is the message on each of yours?_

Matt blinked, leaning forwards again.

"Message…?" He glanced at his blank piece, then looked at Mello. "Is there a message on yours, Mello?"

Mello frowned and turned his piece over – almost dropping it in surprise.

"Yes, there is…!" He thrust it out towards Matt. "Look, here, on the back… That's L's writing, I recognize it…!"

Matt frowned at the tiny hand-written note, then turned his own over – finding a small note of his own. Mello was already elbowing him aside to quickly type a reply to Near as his excitement with a new lead ever so slightly displaced his reluctance to work with the younger boy.

_M: Yes, we both have notes on our pieces_

_N: As I thought. Allow me to explain. The last time we saw L, he brought me a jigsaw puzzle – you may recall it, the white one with an L in the corner. I was putting it together the day we were called in__to Roger's office about L's death. It was apparently sealed when he gave it to me, but I found, on putting together, that there were three pieces missing. When I finally opened my envelope this morning, I found that it contained a piece, and therefore concluded that you two might be in possession of the remaining two. The message on mine reads "Gods of Death"._

"What does yours say?" Mello asked of Matt, glancing down at his own.

"Uh, it says… "L, do you know"," Matt answered, his eyes still on the computer screen. "Yours?"

"It says "love apples"."

Matt nodded and swiftly typed a reply to Near:

_M: We have "love apples" and "L, do you know"_

"So what message do we have?" Mello asked absently. "Do we fit it all together…?" He snatched Matt's away and tried to force both pieces together as Matt himself continued to type:

_M: Do you think they are singular messages or meant to be read as one? If the latter is the case, we have either "Gods of Death, L, do you know love apples?" or "L, do you know love apples? Gods of Death__."_

"No," Mello said from behind him. "Our two pieces don't fit together, I just tried. That means Near's piece goes in the middle."

_N: I don't believe that 'love apple' is meant as a noun-phrase; rather, I presume that 'love' is a verb attached to the noun 'apple', which leaves it only able to be put behind 'Gods of Death'_

_M: M has just tried to put our pieces together and they don't fit. Yours, therefore, goes in the middle_

There was a pause, and then Near wrote;

_N: Then the only combination is "L, do you know Gods of Death love apples?" _

"L, do you know Gods of Death love apples?" Mello read off, perplexed. "What the hell is _that_ meant to mean…?"

"No idea… Oh?" Matt leaned forwards in interest as a tiny blue envelope icon superimposed itself over Near's textbox. "What's this?"

"Open it," Mello demanded, snatching for the mouse; Matt swiped it out of his reach.

"Let me just check it isn't a virus first," he muttered, bringing up the appropriate toolbar.

However, he'd no sooner pulled the toolbar up when it suddenly shut itself again, revealing another small bar that had placed itself over the envelope.

It read _MELLO AND MATT_.

"What the heck is going on here…?" Matt breathed, clicking desperately at the now completely-unresponsive computer.

"It has our _names_ on it," Mello said loudly, shoving at Matt. "You said the Wammy's database was secure, so will you just _open_ the fucking thing…?"

"I _can't_!" Matt blazed in frustration, banging the mouse down on the desk. "It's stopped responding, I'll have to—"

There was a small _click_ from the computer and the envelope opened itself; and the entire computer went completely haywire. The color on the screen inverted itself, a stream of digits started to run up the left-hand side of the screen at an unreadable speed and a download bar appeared in the middle, shooting upwards through percentages towards completion.

"Fuck, it's a virus…! It's a _virus_!" Matt blazed, clicking furiously again.

"Near sent us a _virus_?" Mello seethed.

"No, I don't think…" Matt suddenly threw himself off his chair – as the download bar reached seventy-eight per cent – and dived under the desk for the mains. "Look, _call_ him, for godsakes…! See if this is happening to him too…"

Mello fumbled for his phone as Matt started tearing out wires and plugs; hitting the speed-dial button for the last number called and bringing it to his ear—

Only to hear "Caller's number withheld: Restricted".

Mello angrily tossed the phone aside just as the whole computer suddenly went dead, screen blacking out as the download bar reached ninety-six per cent. Matt heaved a sigh of relief as he clambered back out from under the desk and sank into his seat, still clutching a handful of link wires.

"I can't get hold of Near," Mello spat. "His number's withheld."

"It doesn't matter," Matt sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I've stopped whatever the hell that virus was… He'll call back at some point, I expect…"

Mello gave a frustrated groan and sank onto the edge of the desk.

"What a waste of fucking time…" he muttered blackly.

"Not necessarily," Matt replied. "We know L left us a clue behind."

"Oh, yeah, big whoop. We now know that "Gods of Death", whatever those are, like apples. Thanks a bunch, L…"

Matt shrugged and stretched in his chair.

"Not bad for a man who's been dead for three years, even so," he said pointedly.

Mello got up wearily, rubbing at his gold hair.

"Well, I'll get back to the _real_ leads," he muttered, trailing away towards the kitchen.

Matt watched him go, knowing how disappointed he was – that he'd been forced to work with Near, and that L hadn't come through for him. He'd always expected a lot from L; perhaps _too_ much, really, because although he was the world's greatest detective, he was also, ultimately, only human.

Human enough to die, at any rate.

That was the true source of Mello's problem, and the true source of his disappointment in L:

He'd simply never counted on him dying.

* * *

Near wasn't a very fast mover – certainly not quick enough to leap out of his seat and unplug his computer from the mains before the download bar reached one hundred per cent.

Not that he'd made any effort to.

And now he found himself staring at a new window – one that had opened itself once the download bar had completed and the computer had calmed itself down again.

A window blank but for four typed words in English block capitals:

LIGHT YAGAMI IS KIRA

* * *

"_Have you ever loved anyone, L?"_

_L blinked, glancing at Near; the small pale boy was curled on the floor, deftly working through a Rubik's cube with a detached concentration. The pair of them were in the playroom, which was completely empty due to the hot weather outside. All the other children were out in the garden kicking a ball around or sitting on the grass picking daisies or chasing one another. _

_Regardless, L was still in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, and still drinking tea, and still happier indoors. Near, to be mild about it, didn't much care for being outdoors either, so here they were._

"_Sure," L replied mildly. "I love you and Mello and Matt – you're like my little brothers."_

"_No, that isn't what I meant." Near snapped the last colored cube into place and held it up towards L for his inspection. "I meant in a romantic way."_

"_No, I haven't." L put his cup and saucer aside and looked over the completed Rubik's cube. "Three minutes and thirty-four seconds. Your shortest time yet." He quickly twisted it completely out of sequence again and handed it back. "Go."_

_Near started again, small hands moving quickly and efficiently across the colored squares as he worked out the pattern. _

"_I think you knew that wasn't what I meant," he said expressionlessly, not looking at L._

_L smiled placidly, noting how difficult it was to deceive the child._

"_Yes, of course." He retrieved his teacup. "Does it matter?"_

"_Yes. I think that's a good thing." Near looked over his completed green side and then started on the yellow, which was already half-done._

"_So do I. I have my own theories on it… Reasons for why I haven't ever loved anyone."_

_Near gave an absent nod._

"_I think it's a weakness," he said at length. _

"_Do you?"_

_Near nodded again, still not looking up from his rapidly-rotating cube._

"_It makes people take worthless, unbeneficial risks, if nothing else."_

_L gave a thoughtful nod of his own._

"_I can't argue with that."_

_Near didn't speak again until he'd completed the yellow and blue sides, then glanced up._

"_One of the social workers here showed this movie last week," he said. "Roger made everyone watch it, though Matt and Mello were playing with a Gameboy behind the sofa."_

"_Which movie?"_

"_It was a Disney one. Sleeping Beauty. It's really old."_

_L nodded._

"_Yes, I know it." He tilted his head. "Did you like it?"_

_Near gave a shrug._

"_I wasn't gauging its entertainment factor," he admitted. "I was thinking about the prince. He was an idiot."_

"_How so?"_

_Near paused, pressing a corner of the half-complete Rubik's cube against his bottom lip thoughtfully._

"_I understand sacrifice," he said finally. "I understand why it is necessary. I understand risks and why they must sometimes be taken. I understand why it may sometimes be necessary to lay your life on the line, but… in that movie, the prince risked his life multiple times. He fought a dragon, knowing that he might be killed, and for what? A girl he'd met only once?"_

_L's smile was thoroughly amused by this point, but Near wasn't looking at him. _

"_What a fool he was," Near said firmly, finishing the cube again and passing it over his shoulder to L. "He didn't even know who she was…"_

"_Love is notorious for blinding people," L mused, putting the cube back out of combination a third time. "Here, go again. You were faster again that time – two minutes and fourteen seconds." _

"_Is that why you avoid it?" Near asked, obediently beginning to twist the puzzle back and forth._

"_Partly." L sipped at his tea. "Though I take a different message from Sleeping Beauty. That, and… you're familiar with Snow White, I expect?"_

_Near nodded. _

"_We saw it a few months ago."_

"_Both princesses fall asleep and are awoken by princes who proclaim to love them. It was not their choice to be awakened – what if they didn't __**want**__ to be?"_

_Near turned those black eyes on him – mirror meeting mirror._

"_Regardless, I think we are most likely both mistaken in our interpretation of Sleeping Beauty," L went on. "The real message of it, after all, is "True love conquers all"…"_

"_It's just a fairytale," Near said blandly, going back to his puzzle. "It's not real. There's no such thing as "Happily ever after"."_

"_Is that what you think?"_

_Near looked up, a little perplexed; but saw that L was smiling again, and gave a nod._

"_Yes, that's what I think."_

_L nodded himself._

"_You're probably right. But then… does it follow that anyone who seeks one is a fool?"_

"_I'd say so." Near got up, bringing L the cube – he'd completed it again._

"_Fifty-four __seconds," L said, raising his eyebrows. "Extremely impressive."_

"_I'm bored of that now," Near said, twirling his hair absently around a finger. "Will you do a jigsaw puzzle with me?"_

"_I'm not very good at jigsaws, Near. I have a habit of misplacing pieces."_

"_You can watch me do one."_

"_Alright."_

_Near gave a nod and started out of the room._

"_I'll go and get one."_

_L nodded absently and quickly put the Rubik's cube out of combination, beginning to do it himself._

"_I've messed it up," he said on Near's return, making the pale child look up as he crossed the room. _

_He held up the puzzle – perfectly complete except for a single square of wrong color on every side. Near put the jigsaw box down and took the puzzle from L, deftly twisting it this way and that._

"_Have you ever loved anyone, L?" He asked again, not looking at the man he admired._

"_No."_

"_Good. Always keep it that way. Love is mortal. If you can't love, you can't "mess up"."_

_He put the now-perfect Rubik's cube into L's palms, taking the detective's long fingers and closing them around the puzzle with his own small hands._

"_You can't lose," Near said softly, with his reflection in L's eyes as L's was in his own. "You can't die."_

* * *

Truth and intrigue and PLOT, oh my!

Mwa ha ha. We're starting to move now, in a very big way. Light is going to have to get his ass in gear now that Near has such a huge unfair advantage over him.

And while everyone pities poor little unloved dead L, the bastard is using MNM to pull strings he set up before Light even killed him in the first place.

Meanwhile, where is Misa? What was it that L wanted to ask for from Light but couldn't? Are Mello and Matt doomed to be PWNED by Near forever? Why can a nine year old child effortlessly beat the almighty genius L at a Rubik's cube? Is Light _ever_ going to get a break from us…?

**And now, an important announcement:**

If you have _Poison Apple_ on your story alert list, you will have undoubtedly noticed that you in fact received TWO alerts for updates for the fic – the second being for a chapter entitled _Act Minus: Glass Slipper_.

Allow me to explain – _Act Minus_ is a BONUS ACT, like _Act Zero: Once Upon a Dream_. It is related to the storyline of _Poison Apple_ but does not further the plot in any way, and so it goes up as a singular act all by itself.

Here's the thing. _Act Minus: Glass Slipper_ deals with **Beyond Birthday**.

Quite a few people have asked about him in reviews and, as initially he was not going to even be mentioned in passing in the fic, I told those people as much. There is not much of a place for B in _Poison Apple_, but I suppose the main reason for the pretense thus far that he doesn't even exist is because, when I came up with the idea for this fic, I didn't know that B _did_ exist. Narroch and I didn't discover B until sometime in November last year, by which point almost the entirety of Act I, _Fairietayle_, had been written – and incidentally, it was still another three months until _Another Note_ was officially released.

Anyway, I digress. The point is, B was never going to be in here. By the time we knew anything about him, it was too late to add him, and that aside, there really isn't a place for Beyond Birthday in _Poison Apple_.

So why deal with him?

Because there may be no place for B himself in _Poison Apple_, but there is certainly a place for his _death_.

But, yeah, it would seem random to just suddenly mention him with no reference to him anywhere else in the fic, so B gets his own all-inclusive act.

It's difficult to explain. Even Narroch was like "WTF?!" when I emailed her to tell her I was putting B in, so… you'll just have to read it. :)

THAT SAID… If you have **not** read _Death Note: Another No_te and are planning to, I would not recommend reading _Act Minus_ if you don't want the book ruined for you. As before, _Glass Slipper_ is only a bonus act that does not further the plot of _Poison Apple_, so you won't miss any plot details if you skip out on it for now.

Anyway, away with you all to _Act Minus: Glass Slipper_, and don't say we never treat you!

- RR and Narroch

xXx


	20. Act Minus: Glass Slipper

Ah, Beyond Birthday. In short, he's a nutjob murderous version of L with Shinigami Eyes – of _course_ he was going to be popular. There was a dormant fanbase for him lying in wait before he was even _created_…

The need arose to deal with him _Poison Apple_. Or, specifically, his death, and the further rift it creates between our hapless "lovers". Can L possibly _become_ any more pissed off with dear little Lighty?

Yes. Yes he can.

Please note that this is the only place in _Poison Apple_ in which Beyond Birthday will appear. He will not become a regular feature of the story after this – it is unlikely that he will even be mentioned again.

**SPOILER ALERT: **If you have **NOT** read _Death Note: Another Note_, plan to, don't want it spoiled, but ignored my warning at the bottom of the previous chapter anyway, let me again bar your way with my army of Spork-Wielding Sock-Puppets of Doom (don't ask…):

If you've read the book, fine. You may pass.

If you haven't read the book, and a.) don't plan to; or b.) don't care if it gets spoiled, you may pass.

If you haven't read and DON'T WANT IT SPOILED, DON'T READ THIS. It unravels the huge fuck-off twist in the book, so I don't want to hear anyone whining about how I wrecked _Another Note_ for them. So YOU MAY NOT PASS, WRETCH.

(Incidentally, someone wrecked it for me. I enjoyed it anyway, but I wasn't at all shocked by the ending…)

Additionally, you may have guessed by the chapter of this act that BB gets his own Disney Princess reference.

Because how unfair would it have been to leave him out?

:3

Poison Apple: Act Minus

Glass Slipper

"_I still can't believe you were cheating," Light said, his tone a little incredulous as he looked up at the ceiling; he was sprawled naked under the bedsheets with his hair in truly spectacular disarray. The warmth between them seeped throughout the room, tinting the air with the comfortable drowsiness that always accompanied them when the elements of their relationship were finally let loose and simultaneously drawn together, unbidden outside the damning rules of the investigation._

"_Cheating is a very strong word, Light-kun," L replied sweetly, glancing down at him – he was sitting up on his side of the bed, fully dressed again and nibbling at his thumbnail. "I prefer to call it 'manipulation of card sequence to one's advantage'."_

_Light averted his eyes towards the detective, meeting his charcoal gaze._

"_Don't try and worm your way out of it," the teen snapped haughtily. "We played Twenty-Ones as a fair means of deciding who got to top, you weren't playing fair, I caught you and it serves you right. For what it's worth, I hope you can't sit down for a week."_

_L shifted on the bed, facing Light with a playful pout._

"_What an unkind sentiment to direct towards your lover, Light-kun." _

"_You're not my "lover", you drama queen," Light bit out._

_L blinked at him, pout turning to moue._

"_Then what am I?" He tilted his head. "Am I your boyfriend?"_

_Light gave a short laughing snort._

"_As if."_

"_Man-friend?"_

"_Shut up." Light kneaded his forehead. "You're just… I don't know. I don't know what you are to me."_

"_Just a friend, then?" L clicked his nail thoughtfully against white teeth. "No, wait. I think I have it. I believe we are 'Partners of Circumstance', Light-kun." He jingled the chain as though to underline this notion._

"_Right," Light agreed with a nod. "It's all just circumstance. We're chained together so we're constantly close and have to share a bed and everything, and because of that—"_

"—_We have become involved in a relationship of this nature." L gave a quick, quiet little sigh. "Oh, well. Better to have – and to be – a partner of circumstance than nothing at all."_

"_It's nothing personal, you know," Light replied airily, fidgeting with the sheets. "I wouldn't consider any human relationship to have the "lover" status. That the kind of thing that only happens in movies. You know, that kind of black and white passionate love affair where nothing else matters, not even death, or… well, whatever."_

"_Oh." L was nodding in understanding. "Yes, I see your point. If we were "lovers", you could confess to me that you were Kira and I would just look into your eyes and say "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn", and then… gather you in my arms and carry you upstairs to the bedroom."_

"_Right." Light rolled his eyes at the clichéd romance movie reference. "But in reality, if I were to say that I was Kira, you'd have me arrested on the spot."_

"_**Are**__ you Kira?"_

"_No." Light sighed deeply. "Nice try, though."_

_L gave another small sigh of his own and leaned in towards Light, resting his head on the boy's shoulder. _

"_Well, be that as it may, I like being partners of circumstance with you, Light-kun," he said at length. "I never realized how nice it is to be close to someone, to have someone you care about…"_

_Light affectionately mussed the detective's ebony hair._

"_Thankyou, Ryuzaki, but… surely you care about Watari too? And your little brothers…?"_

"_Yes, but it's not the same thing that I… well, with you…"_

"_I should certainly hope not."_

_L smirked deviously._

"_Well, I do care about them, anyway. Very much so."_

"_So you're not a __**completely**__ heartless, lying bastard."_

_L looked up at him._

"_Heartless, you say?"_

"_I just said you weren't completely heartless." Light paused. "You're definitely a liar, though."_

"_Yes," L replied glazedly. "I suppose I can't argue with that."_

_Light gave a faint little laugh and snuggled down comfortably under the bedclothes, pulling L close to him so that they were cuddled up snugly together – the detective fully clothed and with his head resting on Light's bare chest. They both tracked the easy rise and fall of mutual breaths, cadence kept in time by their satisfied rapport._

"_You promised me éclairs," L reminded him, long after the small verbal pulse points had faded away into blissful silence._

"_I know," Light responded drowsily, sleep tugging at his sleeve and dipping his head lower into the pillow. "I'll get them… tomorrow… I keep my promises… I'm not a liar… like you…"_

_L just sucked at the cuff of his own sleeve and didn't say anything, already feeling the rhythm of Light's chest slow to a sedated breathing pattern._

_Of course he was a liar; almost his entire reputation as L was built on the lies he'd spun people to claw his way to the top, the Lind L. Taylor incident being only one example of hundreds. And he'd lied to Light a whole lot too, the card games the latest but neither the first nor the last._

_Hell, he'd even lied about those little brothers, the secret bulging like an undigested rat in a snake._

* * *

L was sitting on the floor outside the bathroom door, just to the left of it, when Light came out after his morning shower, a towel around his waist.

"Did you have a nice shower?" L asked dully, glancing up at him with his dead accusing eyes.

Light ignored him the way he'd taken to doing as much as he could, going back to the bedroom to get dressed for university. L got up and followed him, standing in the doorway as Light discarded his towel and pulled on his shorts and a pair of designer jeans.

"There was no blood, I presume?" L went on softly.

"L, I'm not in the mood for this right now," Light replied with a scowl, making sure to show his disregard for his presence by rifling through the wardrobe for a shirt, not even acknowledging him enough for eye contact.

"Are you ever?" L murmured, tilting his head and appraising the snub with no great distress.

Light ignored him again, buttoning his shirt and pulling a black V-neck jumper on over it. He rubbed the towel over his damp hair and then ran a comb through it, turning towards the bedroom door to leave for the kitchen—

—And finding L startlingly close, his eyes suddenly looming like dark pitfalls, blocking both his path and his view of the doorway.

"Light-kun, can I tell you something?" The dead detective asked, eyes glazed and dull and unblinking. The tarnished lenses slowly shifted across Light's face, but did not return his gaze; it was more like the tipping of a glass, pouring sight down his countenance with nothing but the impassivity of gravity.

"No." Light couldn't ignore the way those blank eyes pulled a shiver from him, drawing it out like a painful splinter; it was all he could do just to push his way through the tremor and shove L out of the way. "I never like anything you tell me. I don't care, L."

He left the bedroom, but L followed him as persistently as a shadow, unfazed by his rebuke.

"Go _away_, L," Light bit out warningly, not turning to him as he appeared in the doorway, rather starting to make some toast.

Again, L ignored the order and crossed over to the kitchen table, sitting down and once again neglecting his crouching position for a normal stance. He neatly folded his arms on the table's surface and waited for Light to join him there, however desireless the younger man was to do so. When Light eventually did trudge over, it was with a cup of coffee, a plate of toast and a jar of jam. L watched him with immense interest as he spread the jam on his toast, precisely as an artist with his brush, and then finally spoke when Light lifted one piece of it up to his mouth to take a bite.

"There's something I thought you might like to know, is all," he said dully.

"Like what?" Light responded moodily through a mouthful of toast and jam.

"My little brothers," L said cryptically; "…my heirs."

Light's cinnamon eyes widened and he lowered his toast a little.

"What… about them?"

"I lied about them."

"Wh…?" Light blinked, then gave a shake of his head. "No, they… they exist, you even… even mentioned them yourself the other night… Mello and Near… they _exist_, I _know_ they do…!"

L gave a dry smirk, knowing he'd fully arrested Light's attention with that one sentence.

"Oh, yes, they exist," he agreed expressionlessly. "And so does the third, but you don't seem to know anything about him, so I won't fill in any blanks for you regarding him."

"But then… what are you talking about?" Light snapped frustratedly. "What do you mean, you _lied_?"

L gave a shrug.

"I mean that I lied," he said, getting up again. "I told you that I had three little brothers. That's not true. It was never true. Well, as far as present tense goes, it would be fair to say that _now_ there are only three, but that is a subtracted number, you understand."

"Then… then how many _were_…?"

"Four," L said softly. "There were four."

Light's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Then why did you never mention the fourth one?" He demanded.

"A number of reasons," L replied, leaning across the table towards Light. "The most prominent of which being that the fourth one – or the _first_ one, to be fair – is dead."

"Then why does it matter?" Light snapped, going back to his toast once he realized that whatever L was telling him wouldn't be a help to his current mission. As usual he was digging up the past, revealing bones that had long since lost their frame and their relevance. "Why are you telling me now, after all this time?"

"Because I want you to understand that even if you hadn't killed _me_, I would still have an incredibly personal reason for hating Kira. It's a reason I've always carried with me. But it seemed easier not to tell you about it, especially when we were chained together and… well, what did we call it…? Oh, yes – "partners of circumstance". It was something I preferred to keep it to myself during that time, because I never believed one hundred per cent that you _were_ Kira, Light-kun."

Light gave a disgusted snort.

"You're making it sound like _I_ killed your… brother or heir or whatever he was," he said coldly.

L's eyes took on an odd, lifeless glint, as though packed with tarnished tinfoil. He leaned closer still towards Light, with some kind of shattered smirk distorting his pale face.

"_Does the name 'Beyond Birthday' mean anything to you?_" He hissed, voice barely audible as his cold breath whistled between teeth of condemnation.

Light's eyes widened and he blinked a few times, stunned into silence by the unlikely connection.

"He died in prison in early 2004, if your memory needs refreshing," L went on, his voice savagely low. "He died of a sudden inexplicable heart attack—"

"_He_ was your "little brother"?!" Light burst out incredulously. "That maniac was one of your heirs…?"

"Oh, so you _do_ remember." L leaned back again in satisfaction.

"Of course I remember," Light hissed, recovering from his shock with practiced ease. "I remember writing it, thinking it a strange name… It's one that always stuck with me—"

"How ironic."

Light glanced at L in disgust as the full recollection was dusted off.

"But what stuck with me more was what he did," he growled. "The crimes that I punished him for… The Los Angeles BB Murder Case, am I right in remembering?"

L gave an absent nod.

"Yes. Naomi Misora helped me solve that case."

Light's eyes narrowed further still, leaving only venomous slits.

"Which of your wretched protégés are we talking about here, L?" He seethed. "I can't believe what you're saying – that Beyond Birthday was honestly one of _your_ _heirs_? He murdered three people and then mutilated their bodies in absolutely horrific ways—"

"I never said I was proud of what B did," L interrupted icily.

"Oh, _B_," Light sneered. "You even have a cute little nickname for him."

"It's not a nickname, it's a codename. Beyond's codename from Wammy's House, like I am L."

"Is that so?" Light's eyes darkened with unapologetic antagonism. "Well, just so you know, the knowledge that Beyond Birthday was your "little brother" doesn't _change_ anything. I'm not sorry I judged him. He deserved to die—"

"Yes," L interrupted calmly. "Perhaps he did. Regardless, as I have always believed, it was not your place to decide that, Light Yagami."

"Well, that's why _you_ died, isn't it?" Light spat.

L said nothing, only sat at the opposite side of the table, utterly motionless.

"Why are you bringing this up, anyway?" Light eventually went on, sipping complacently at his coffee. "After everything that's happened, what difference does it make that you lied about how many fake brothers you do or don't have?"

"B's actions were inexcusable, but so was his death. There was no way you could have known what B was to me, but I'm afraid I took your killing of him personally, Light-kun. Even back then, all that time ago, when we were "partners of circumstance", it was a hatred that came with the percentage of my suspicion of you. Yes, even when I loved you, I knew that if I were to be proven correct about your guilt, it was something I could never forgive you for."

Light was struck silent again at this point, and L leaned in towards him again.

"If you must know," he went on, his voice almost gentle, "I've never fully blamed you for becoming Kira. I've seen the Death Note, I know its power – and its power is one that is tempting to humans. I understand that. If it had fallen first into my hands instead of yours, I cannot say that I am one hundred per cent certain that I wouldn't have done something like what you did. I don't think it's entirely your _fault_ that you became Kira, Light-kun – that is, I don't think every single one of your intentions was truly evil. Indeed, even my own death… I understand why you needed me dead. I was the biggest threat to your cause, so of course it makes logical sense that you needed to get me out of the way. When I take that into account, as angry as I am, I suppose I can even _forgive_ you for it. At the end of the day, we both know I'm not here to seek vengeance on you for killing me. But why did I bring up B after all this time, you ask?"

L stepped back again, giving a sudden deep sigh.

"Or perhaps a better question," he mused, "is "Why did I neglect to mention him before now?"… The truth is, for a long time, I wanted to pretend he had never existed. As you may have guessed, he wasn't much credit to me or to Wammy's House, and after he died… I felt that I didn't have to be guilty about him anymore. He tried to kill himself, you see. He obviously didn't succeed, and it wasn't as though I could have stopped him even if I _had_ known, but in the end… I suppose I drove him to it. The mere fact that L existed drove him to do what he did. The murders, his attempted suicide… He was like you, I suppose, Light-kun. It wasn't his fault, not really. His mind wasn't—"

"Don't you _dare_ compare me to your defective heir!" Light blazed furiously. "There's nothing wrong with _my_ mind."

"B was mad," L murmured, not listening to the younger man. "It wasn't his fault. He never should have been chosen as my heir, he never should have been allowed to leave Wammy's House, but he didn't get the help he needed, and when he didn't meet expectations we just pushed him aside and chose new heirs…" He looked up at Light again. "That's why I never mentioned him," he said more firmly. "I wanted to pretend he didn't exist because it's my fault that he turned out the way he did. I don't know if I could ever have saved him, but the point is that I didn't even try."

The dead detective gnawed at his thumbnail for a moment or two.

"Beyond Birthday was the forgotten one," he said softly. "The one we pushed away, but it really wasn't his fault, and I suppose I mentioned him after all this time because I just want you to know that his death is something that I cannot forgive you for, Light-kun."

He tilted his head and his dead eyes again glinted a little with a life that he did not possess.

"I never, ever will."

* * *

"_You've noticed it too, then," L said, sipping at his rapidly-cooling tea._

_Watari gave a weary nod. _

"_L, you're only twenty as it is," he said tiredly, "and I certainly don't expect you to die anytime soon, but you did agree to the notion of training heirs to be the next L __**should**__ anything befall you, and we let you pick the candidates yourself after A proved to be a mistake—"_

"_Yes," L murmured, putting the teacup down. "Well, I confess that not even __**I**__ expected A to hang himself. Regardless, it's far too late to be worried about him. It is B who concerns me. He certainly shows signs of being quite severely disturbed."_

"_I've lost count of the times Roger's had him in his office," Watari murmured, sinking into his own chair. "He can't get anything out of him. He's been with the social workers, the psychologist… They can't diagnose anything, his symptoms are too varied to be from a single specific psychological illness, yet it's as if the characteristics are manifesting themselves in reverse order, pairing syndromes that are not normally possible in humans. In the end, all we can conclude is that B is 'abnormal', which doesn't really help us in terms of treatment…"_

"_I know, I know." L rubbed at his temples – he was just barely clear of his own teenage years and the sixteen year old B was causing him problems. "The fact that he nailed a live rat to the headboard of his bed so that he could watch it die speaks for itself…"_

"_The trouble is, this could be another case like A," Watari pointed out. "It was the pressure of being chosen as your successor that drove him to take his own life. It's unclear as to whether or not this maladaptive behavior B has exhibited is due to his position as your heir, or…"_

"_I don't know what to do, Watari," L said softly. "I chose B myself. His intelligence… well, it's highly likely that it matches mine, if not more so, and he seemed so eager to take on the role even though he knew what the pressure of it had driven A to. It's possible, as you said, that the same thing is happening to B, and if that's the case, what should we do about it? I know B well enough to say in advance that he wouldn't take very kindly to the suggestion that he give up his position as my heir."_

"_My suggestion is quite the opposite, as a matter of fact," Watari replied, making L look at him curiously. "I think it would be in our interest to choose more heirs. Perhaps two more…?"_

"_Do you think that's a good idea?" L hopped out of his chair and went to the window with his hands in his pockets to look out at the empty play-yard at the front of Wammy's House. "If being my heir is what's driven A and B mad, perhaps we shouldn't be training any more—"_

"_I think a lot of it comes from strength of character, too," Watari interrupted gently. "I don't recall ever seeing you erecting a noose from your doorframe or nailing a live rat to your bed."_

"_But I'm the first L," L murmured, his shoulders sagging further. "I didn't have a reputation to live up to."_

"_Well, even so, I think it wise to choose some more candidates worthy for the title of L," Watari replied. "It's a mistake to only have one at a time. When A died we had to start over with B, and if B… well, if anything were to happen to him, we'd be back at Square One all over again…"_

"_I…" L gave a small sigh, gazing at his reflection in the window of Watari's office. "Alright. You have a point, Watari."_

"_Would you rather choose them yourself, or take a look at the ones Roger has put forward?"_

_L glanced sharply at him._

"_You've already discussed this?"_

"_We'd never have taken any action without your say-so, but Roger and I have previously discussed this, yes." Watari paused. "He is very concerned about B's behavior too."_

"_You're so sneaky," L said snippily, coming back to the desk, but he was smiling faintly even so. He took the few loose sheets from Watari's hand to look through them._

"_These two," he said almost immediately, putting down the two top sheets onto the desk. "Mello and Near."_

"_That was quick," Watari said, bewildered._

"_I'd considered them anyway, back when I chose B, but they're so young… I mean, Near's only eight…" L gave a shake of his head. "Regardless, these two, Watari. They're the smartest two kids here after B."_

"_Alright." Watari gathered up the sheets. "I'll inform Roger of your decision. Will you talk to Mello and Near yourself?"_

_L gave a nod._

"_Yes. I spoke to B about it myself, after all." He looked idly through the rest of the sheets. "By the way, I'd prefer to treat these new heirs as separate to B."_

"_I…a-alright, if that's what you want, L."_

"_And in that case, there are only two in this new category. I want three. Here." L handed Watari a third sheet. "I'd like to choose Matt as my third heir."_

_Watari glanced bemusedly at the sheet._

"_Matt…? Are you sure?"_

_L nodded again, certainty stemming from an unknown source._

"_He's more than capable, I assure you," he said confidently. "I'll talk to them all myself about the position, but there's someone else I should talk to first, don't you think…?"_

_Watari closed his eyes and gave another small, weary nod._

"_Yes, you probably should."_

_L picked up his teacup and drained what was left of the drink, setting it down on the saucer again with a clink and heading for the door of the office._

"_You know, for what it's worth," he said, pausing at the door to glance back at Watari, "I do have a lot of confidence in B's abilities." _

"_I know," Watari replied kindly, but L was already out of the door, letting it swing closed behind him._

_L wasn't one for being afraid or shy of other people, but he always hesitated before knocking on B's door. He wasn't afraid of B either, it was just… _

_Well, it seemed both unkind and hypocritical to say that B was weird when L knew he wasn't exactly Mr Normal himself, but even so…_

"_Go away!" He heard the teenager snap from the other side of the door; which the young detective took as an invitation to push down the handle and enter the room._

_The room was dark, as it often was, lit only by a dim bedside lamp that did nothing to illuminate the room. If anything its only function was to make the shadows seem even more oppressive, since its light could not penetrate the thick darkness._

"_B?" L closed the door behind him, looking around and locating the boy hunched near the bed._

"_I said go aw—!" B started, whirling on him with a snarl; but then he aborted the angry imperative and his expression altered when he recognized the intruder. "Oh, L…!"_

_There was a toothy smile on his pale face now as he approached the detective; even L was unsettled by how similar B was in appearance to him. It wasn't that B was his exact carbon copy, but they had a similar build and complexion and B even had the same jet black hair. To be frank, if B __**wanted**__ to make himself look like L, he could probably pull it off flawlessly._

"_What are you doing, B?" L asked suspiciously, noting that B first glanced at the place directly above his head, then met his gaze before looking away, casting his eyes across the dark floor as though he was searching for something he'd lost._

_He frowned when B's eyes furtively returned a second time to the air above his head, slyly swiveling up without head movement to accompany the gaze – B had a habit of doing this to everyone he met, the young detective had noticed._

"_What are you looking at?" He asked, not giving the boy time to answer his first question._

"_Nothing," the teenager replied, answering both questions and instantly snapping his attention back to L's face. "What are… I mean, you…"_

"_What do I want?" L supplied dryly. "I just wanted to have a little talk to you, if that's alright."_

_What little color had been in B's face to begin with drained right out of it with astonishing speed, leaving him white as a chalk pillar. _

"_I didn't do anything," he said quickly, trying to suppress the sullen guilt radiating from him as he repeatedly stubbed his left foot against the floor._

"_B, I don't want to know about the rat, if that's what you're worried about," L replied coldly._

"_That was an experiment," B said defensively, cocking his head back as though his guilt had been instantly transfigured into pride through some alchemy hidden even from L himself._

"_I don't care, I don't want to hear about it." L said, silently discomforted by how quickly B could change emotional gears without stripping his internal hub. He crossed over to B's bed, stepped up onto the sheets and settled into his crouch, noting that B was watching him very intently from where he was standing. "It's just that I've made an important decision and felt that you should be the first to know about it."_

"_Oh?" B tilted his head in interest._

"_Yes." L took a breath and then exhaled. "I've chosen three more heirs in addition to you, to be treated as a separate "unit" from you, and—"_

"_No!" B cried, throwing himself down on the floor by the bed; kneeling up to grasp desperately at the bottom of L's jeans. "__**I'm**__ your heir!"_

"_Of course you are," L said patiently, "it's just that I've decided that it's not fair to place all of the burden on you – after all, that's what most likely led to A's suicide, and—"_

"_I don't mind, I want the burden!" B pleaded, now grabbing at L's hands and clasping them between his own very similar ones. "I'm stronger than A, I don't need to you make it easier for me…! Please don't pick more heirs, L! I'm the only one you need, I'll do a good job, I promise!"_

"_B…" L worked one of his hands free from the teenager's frenzied grip and placed it on the crown of his head to calm him as if he were a child. "This is for your benefit. We're all… well, we're worried about you, and I think—"_

"_Worried?" B hissed, accusations barbing his tongue. "Who's worried?"_

"_I am," L said firmly. "It doesn't matter who else is. Now look, I honestly didn't expect you to make this much fuss, and I'm not very impressed that you have, so please stop this. I won't have you dictating what I can and can't do regarding the succession of my title. I'm not taking your position as my heir away from you, understand?"_

"_But I'm your heir," B whispered, his voice quavering slightly, though it was difficult to tell if it was from suppressed tears or rage. "I want to be L, __**I**__ want to be you…"_

_L pulled away from him completely and got off the bed, disquieted once again by his volatile mood swings, changes that seemed to hinge on the whim of a single word, swerving chaotically back and forth between extremes…_

"_I'm not going to put up with tantrums from you, Beyond," he said icily. "Perhaps we should discuss this when you've calmed down and given thought to how much this is going help you. Please remember, you would still be first in line for my title." _

_He stepped across the room again, bare feet noiseless on B's bedroom carpet as he headed towards the door._

"_L, I'm sorry," B wailed, pulling himself up. "I wasn't having a tantrum, I'll talk now—"_

"_No. You're not calm." L looked at him, nibbling at his bottom lip. "You see, Beyond? This is what we're worried about. I'll… I'll come and see you again later, okay? I'll bring some cake and we can sit and talk about it properly."_

_B wasn't left with much a choice, and gave a indifferent shrug and a nod._

"_Okay."_

_L gave a tiny nod of his own and opened the door – and as he did so, a small frog hopped out from the darkness under the bed and bounded to freedom down the hallway. L watched it go, then turned his attention back to B – the teenager actually stepped back in fright from the glare L shot at him._

"_And please make sure you've finished your torturing of small defenseless animals before I arrive," he said coldly, and he walked out of the room and slammed the door behind him._

_The sixteen year old gave a sulky little sigh; then reached into his pocket and withdrew, clutched tightly in his fingers, the other small, quivering frog he'd caught earlier that afternoon. _

"_He's only got five more years left in him," he crooned to the terrified creature as it squirmed across his nimble fingers, hopelessly trying to escape, "which is a pity, but more than I can say for you."_

* * *

(It really _hadn't_ been B's fault.

That didn't excuse the murders – it didn't exempt him from his guilt. B had always had an extremely sadistic streak in his nature, evident from an early age in the way he "experimented" on whatever small creatures he could catch. Rats, mice, fish and frogs from the pond, spiders, even the odd bird or two…

They all fed his cruel and twisted whims.

L had despaired of him, Roger had punished him and the other children had kept away from him; but the former two, along with Watari, had all reasoned that tormenting small creatures was just a childish phase of Beyond's, one that he would grow out of when he reached adulthood.

It was, after all, a form of "playing God", a childish trait evident also in Kira – in Light Yagami, who himself had been very young when he started on his campaign to rid the world of criminals.

To B's credit, he _did_ grow out of killing frogs and rats and coating their corpses with quicklime (all the sooner for him to have nothing left but their off-white bones); unfortunately, the only reason he lay off them was because he found that killing other humans was far more entertaining than taking the lives of lesser creatures.

B had been rejected long before he'd gone to Los Angeles and killed his first victim, Believe Bridesmaid. L's choosing of Mello, Near and Matt as further heirs – the Hydra formulation who would go up against Kira after his death – hadn't exactly been the first nail in the coffin of B's right to the title of 'L', but it certainly had been the last.

After all, it was B's rejection that had caused him to go to Los Angeles – that entire murder case had been nothing but an elaborate bid for L's attention, after all. L had been a fool not to read it in B before it had come to that; not to read it in his reaction to his initial telling him about the three new heirs. B's view of L was complex, to say the least; he respected him, adored him to the point of worship, so much that he wanted to _be_ him, but he also despised him because if _he_ was L then it meant that B couldn't be, and he hated that L had seen fit to pick three other successors, it made him feel betrayed and unwanted, like L didn't see him as good enough to succeed him anymore…

L hadn't understood that. He'd been too busy to understand B's simultaneous infatuation with and hatred of him. He'd only really understood during the LA BB Case, and by then it had been far too late to do anything about it.

When Naomi Misora had called him and said that a detective calling himself Rue Ryuzaki had shown up in the house of Believe Bridesmaid, the first victim, and had described his uncanny appearance, he'd understood.

He'd always observed, of course, that B could make his likeness his own with very little effort, after all. _Near_ was the one with L's mirror mirror eyes, but B had his white-as-snow skin and black-as-ebony hair as well as the intellect to detect and mimic even the slightest nuances of L's behavior.

B had wanted L's attention – _all_ of his attention – and hell, he knew how to get it. L had been sickened by the LA murders, but not remotely surprised. Even the Wara Ningyo dolls nailed to the walls at the scene of each crime were reminiscent of that rat he'd nailed to the headboard of his bed.

This was B's retaliation, after all; his way of telling L, plain and simple, that he didn't like it one little bit that he'd chosen more heirs, nor indeed that he didn't appreciate the way he'd gradually been pushed away and ignored in favor of the new successors.

It was true – L couldn't deny it. He'd paid more and more attention to Mello, Matt and Near and less and less attention to Beyond on his visits to Wammy's House. He hadn't known how to deal with B anymore – even _he_ couldn't put a stop to his sadistic tendencies, after all. He'd thought that perhaps B was only doing it for attention and that maybe it was _best_ to just ignore him, but…

Well, it went without saying that B didn't like to be ignored.

In retrospect, Beyond Birthday's story was something of a shattered _Cinderella_ – he'd been there first, the prized and prestigious heir, but then the _others_ had come along, and they'd fallen into much better favor; Mello, Near and Matt the Ugly Sisters to B's Cinderella, and B himself was pushed away and ignored, even _though_ he'd been there first.

And maybe L wasn't much of a Fairy Godmother, to say the least, but it still stood that he hadn't made it all better; no-one had swept down and transfigured a gilt coach from a pumpkin and made Cinderella the most beautiful of all and sent her on her way to the ball that would change her life.

Even when he was left behind with nothing but his priceless Shinigami Eyes and his impaled mice, nobody came to give B his happy ever after.

Until the day he died at Kira's hand, he hadn't a single glass slipper to his name.)

* * *

_Roger seemed to assume – always with a sagacious smirk – that whenever L showed up at Wammy's House, he would be the one putting his three young heirs to bed, and wordlessly expected him to do so._

_L didn't like losing, incidentally, but there was no point in fighting this battle – if he ignored them, Matt and Mello would run riot throughout the orphanage all night and Near would fall asleep on the carpet._

_Given Mello and Matt's mile-long CV detailing various breakages and assorted incidents involving indoor fireworks, helium gas and skateboards, L thought he had better not be the one responsible for leaving them unattended all night while he worked and ate cake. He might have been the world's top three detectives but he wasn't much good at mending broken banisters or making the children responsible for breaking them mend them; besides, he didn't trust Mello and Matt not to trample Near if left unsupervised._

_As it happened, he was carrying Near, who had indeed fallen asleep while L hunted for Mello and Matt, finding them in the kitchen stealing cookies. It was all he could to hold Near with one arm while marching Mello along by the scruff of his neck with his other hand to keep him away from Matt, whom Mello had slapped when he thought L wasn't looking over the ownership of a prized chocolate-coated oatmeal cookie. Matt himself was hanging onto the hem of L's top, padding sleepily after him, eyelids drooping like a heavy flower head._

"_You two get ready for bed," L said wearily, kicking open the door to Matt's room and pushing him in. "I'll come check on you after I put Near to bed."_

_He delivered Mello to his room amidst the blonde's protests that the cookie really __**had**__ been his (not that it mattered, given that L had "confiscated" it, making it his by default) and went next door with Near, who hadn't woken up throughout the entire escapade._

_He was glad Near tended to slouch around all day in his pajamas, because it meant he could just put him straight under the covers without waking him. Roger would probably __whine__ that Near should have brushed his teeth before bed, but L personally would have been more fussed if this had been Mello – Near didn't share his and Mello's cavity-collecting sweet tooth. _

_However, Near stirred whilst L was tucking him in, opening his dark eyes drowsily._

"_I… fell asleep?"_

"_Yeah, it's late." L brushed some of Near's snow-white hair from those mirror eyes, filmy with sleep. "Do you want to use the bathroom?"_

_Near shook his head softly._

"_No, I'm okay."_

_L smiled and gave a tired sigh, sitting normally on the edge of Near's bed. He pulled out the cookie he'd taken from Mello and nibbled at it._

"_What's wrong?" Near asked sleepily, watching him through half-lidded eyes._

"_Hm?" L glanced at him. "Nothing. I'm just jetlagged, I think. I just flew in from Los Angeles this morning."_

"_That was… that big murder… case, right…?"_

_L nodded and stood up, petting Near's hair affectionately. _

"_Yes, but don't think about that right now, not while you're trying to sleep. If you want to know about it, I'll tell you tomorrow."_

_Near gave a little smile, which was soon lost to a yawn._

"_Goodnight, Near," L murmured, leaving the room._

"_L!" Near called lethargically after him, making the detective lean back into the room._

"_Yes, Near?"_

"_It… it was him, wasn't it…? B…?"_

_L paused; but Near was clever, and there was no point in lying to him._

"_Yes."_

_Near gave a nod and snuggled down deeper under the covers._

"_I… thought so…"_

_L shut the door and sank down miserably outside it, clutching his knees to his chest. It didn't matter that Near was incredibly intelligent – he was still only eleven years old, and that was what was sad about this whole B thing._

_That an eleven year old could nod and be so unsurprised by the revelation that those horrific murders had been the doing of someone who come from this same place, who'd been on the same path…_

_To be unsurprised, almost as though he'd __**expected**__ it, even when L himself had not._

* * *

"He's the reason," L said from the armchair furthest away from Light as the younger man sat on the couch in front of the TV, diligently writing names down into his precious Death Note. "B, I mean."

"Shut up, I'm busy!" Light snapped savagely.

"I can see that," L said quietly.

"Go away if you don't want to watch this," Light spat. "I'm not going to stop my judgments just because you're haunting me. And you can shut up about your precious B, too. I killed him… what, three years ago? No offense, but this is a severely delayed reaction."

"Not really," L replied. "I'm not talking about B himself, particularly. To be honest, there are a lot of things I'd rather not remember about him. It's just… his _death_…"

"Yes, yes, you can't forgive me for it," Light said distractedly.

"No, not that. It was the cause of something too, you see." And when Light finally looked up at him, L went on; "I always believed that what Kira was doing was wrong, but it wasn't until you killed B that I became truly determined that I would catch you no matter what."

Light smirked, his smile laced with arsenic.

"How sweet."

"Don't get me wrong, Light-kun, it wasn't because I thought B any better than any of the other murderers you've ever killed. It was because… when you killed B, for me, it proved your justification for your killing spree wrong."

Light's chocolate eyes narrowed, touchy as ever when it came to morality.

"How… do you mean?"

"You justify your "judgments" via reasoning that if you take away everyone in the world who commits an evil deed, it will ultimately remove evil itself. But what you fail to understand, Light-kun, is that many of the people who commit evil deeds are not evil themselves. To take B as an example to symbolize thousands of cases… he wasn't sane. He was an extremely disturbed person, and granted, the murders he committed were of a truly evil and vicious nature, but… I honestly don't believe that B _himself_ was evil. I'm not excusing him for what he did – it was vicious and twisted and he certainly deserved to be punished for it, but he simply never fitted into your "subtraction of evil equals good" equation."

Light gave a indignant snort.

"Do you really think that's going to make me _stop_, L?"

"No. In fact, I would be stunned if it did. But I felt that I owed you an explanation, of sorts. If nothing else, your justification for being Kira is severely illogical, and your killing of B proved that to me. You think that killing "evil" people will stop evil, but you've obviously never considered people like B. He didn't choose to be that way, Light-kun, just as people before him haven't chosen to be that way, and the way people after him won't choose to be. To be honest, your logic is positively Medieval – you know, when they didn't understand the idea of mental illness and thought that people who displayed disturbed tendencies were werewolves or possessed by the devil or witches. And what did they do with them…?"

"They killed them," Light replied stiffly.

L nodded meditatively.

"And yet B still horrifically murdered three people in Los Angeles," he said. "They didn't stamp out that "evil" any more than _you_ will. It's the same thing as punishing someone for having cancer, a disease one has no control over."

"Statistics show that my methods are working," Light bit out angrily. "Crime levels have dropped dramatically—"

"Those statistics wouldn't have stopped B, you know; and neither would the fact that you exist. If you'd been Kira at the time of those LA murders, he'd still have killed those people."

"He must have had a very important motive, then," Light responded coolly, getting up to signal that the conversation was drawing rapidly to a close.

"Yes, I… I suppose to him, it was." L gave a small shrug as Light left the room with his notebook. "Who knows, maybe poor B had a point…"

…_After all, you never considered that what B did was someone else's fault._

* * *

**Narroch: **Warning, B rant ahead. -- Right, so I thoroughly enjoyed _Another Note_, having read it while in the hospital with the flu. But there were quite a few things that bothered me, the main one being the portrayal of B's character. In the story B displayed very obvious psychopathic tendencies: his guiltless murders, moral apathy, and fearless grandiosity. He was also portrayed as having psychotic symptoms as well: unstable sense of reality, obsessions, deviant behavior (the laughing...? Come on.) However, psychotic and psychopathic mean completely different things, and are never found within the same person. In real life you just don't get killers who are cool calm and efficiently manipulative in one instance, then laughing and mentally unstable in the next. Yet, popular culture loves to portray this; Hannibal Lector, and Disturbia are good examples of the stereotype. It is just so aggravating to read something and be thrown off by the unrealistic symptoms... It was something we tried to address in here, by making Wammy's House unable to diagnose him, but in all honesty B wouldn't really have existed...

Sorry for that. I'm a psych major... oo;

**RR: **She couldn't resist…

Anyway, yeah. That's that. That's Beyond Birthday dealt with – he will not be mentioned again, nor will he miraculously come back to life and turn up in the main body of _Poison Apple_…

Well, as usual, there is fanart to be gandered at over on our DA, and our forum, _Poison Apple Shoutbox_ (found on my profile), is open all hours if you have any questions, rants, complaints, suggestions, etc, about the fic.

Thankyou for reading! TTYS!

- RobinRocks and Narroch xXx


	21. Hair Black as Ebony

Oh dear me…

You know, as far as ANs go, I don't have my usual mile-long agenda to toss at you all. Good for you. :)

Glad to hear that a lot of you enjoyed the Beyond Birthday tangent that _Glass Slipper_ went off on. Ah, I love B – I actually started posting a separate fic about him, a six-part BxL/LxB "mini-fic" called _Scarlet Letter_.

Anyway, enough shameless plugging. :D

Thankyou to: **Angela and MiniMix, Anja-chan, MiaoShou, CheeseFaerieXXL, Otaku Sage of Llamas, Strange and Intoxicating –rsa, Mask of Mirage, Lady Keruri, Sinful Ang3l, Lostpharoah, April-loves-naota16, Lawliet's Angel, Kiki-sama, fouloldron, Tanka, Tsuki aoi Usagi, Oztan, Olynara Sedai, DoYouFindMeDreadful, Pluto, Vedevria, AutumnDynasty, Fool4Sasuke33, Auxifer, Skyhe, Stargirl7, ProfessorKatze, Anonymous, Kira-Kira, Itallia, Ayachan, Reese Craven, Shima-ru, Greentail, Neko-chwan, Zuzeca, blumarshin, Hazel2Eyes, Phoenix of Hell, Raha, Silverfox, JudasBetrayed, Waychou, Perdue, N.E.May, FacelessIdol, Denika, Dark Chocolate Alchemist, Liviania **and **Yukiko Tsukishirou**.

This chapter: Misa, Matsuda and – _finally_ – the truth about L! Hurrah!

Hair Black as Ebony

He had to know.

It was a base desire that burned him from the inside; a low flame that heated his inquisitiveness subtly yet consistently until it was unbearably searing thought. The vulgar question gnawed away at his mind like a consuming cancer; a malformed creature slowly eating its way out of him. Since he'd stood there in that churchyard, gray sky above and withered roses below; with the wind at his back and the grave in front of him and L at his side…

It had cumulated over the last few days, the bizarre and repugnant reality that constituted L in his most physical sense. Every time L passed silently into his field of vision, he found himself questioning if it was the real thing before him – the real thing, or just a replica of the dead detective, a shell for his soul to inhabit conjured up by gravesoil and the blood of sacrificed animals and wicked spells…

…If the coffin in that grave was empty.

He told himself that such a tasteless question would only show his own immaturity, and it was a waste of time and mental energy to think about it, especially since there were much bigger fish to fry on the Kira menu. That sense of impending pettiness held him back for days before overactive mind demanded the missing details – the what, and how, and _who_, all became starving hollow bowls to fill with his conjectures.

_He had to know_.

Which was why…

"Matsuda?"

"Li-Light?"

Matsuda sounded shocked to hear from him; well, to be fair, it _was_ an unorthodox time. It was almost eleven at night. Light himself probably would have been preparing for bed if he hadn't been preoccupied by pacing restlessly up and down the hall, trying to sort through his half-memories and figure out this whole 'Is-he-actually-L-or-isn't-he?' thing before succumbing to the impulse and taking up his laptop and cell phone and heading to the kitchen.

"Yeah, hey, Matsuda. Sorry it's so late."

"Oh, that's okay, Light!" Matsuda gabbled. "It's no problem, honestly! I was just watching TV. Have you ever—?"

"That's great, Matsuda." Light interjected, all the while tiredly kneading his forehead. "I was wondering if you could do me a favor, actually."

He could practically sense Matsuda jumping to attention on the other end of the line; he could feel the snapping salute in the older man's voice as his back visibly straightened and focused straight ahead, engendering a bustle of formality without any other prompting on Light's part.

"Absolutely, Light. Of course. Anything to help you out. What can I do for you?"

Light's determination cringed, completely unwilling to say the screwball scheme aloud, much less ask Matsuda to actually carry it out…

"Uh, okay, well… this is going to sound weird, but… Ryuzaki's grave…"

There was a short bout of confused silence on the other end, giving just enough time for regret to perch in Light's throat as he attempted to salvage his direction.

"…Yeah, what about it?" Matsuda asked, suddenly sounding rather wary as his suspicion immediately drained out the impromptu professionalism. Light hesitated again, stubbornly holding his breath against his own insatiable curiosity. He just needed to _say _it, fast and dirty, like ripping off an old bandage.

"I, um… I need you to… check if it's been… _disturbed_ recently…" Even with his resolve hardened, the question still awkwardly tiptoed out, as if the ludicrousness was trying to avoid detection.

"D-disturbed? What do you mean by disturbed? You mean, like… you think he's come back to life and crawled out of it, or you think someone dug him up, or—?" Light was both relieved by Matsuda's brainless assumption, and unsettled by its uncanny accuracy.

"Matsuda, please don't ask questions right now. You don't have to go now, anyway. I'm sending you a pre-approved police exhumation warrant, and I have already contacted the morgue; get some equipment and go in the morning."

"I… don't have to dig it up, do I…?" Matsuda sounded rather faint now, and Light took comfort in the fact that he wasn't the only one creeped out by the possible zombie situation.

"You might. I mean… if it's too difficult to tell whether or not it's been touched, you'll probably have to check for yourself, but… don't think about that."

"Why… why do you want to—?"

"Please, Matsuda. No questions. It's just… a hunch I have."

"Okay." Matsuda's confidence returned at the mention of a possible lead. "I'll check it out for you tomorrow, Light. No worries."

"Thanks, Matsuda. I knew I could count on you. Goodnight."

Light snapped his phone shut with a relieved sigh and put it aside, tapping his mouse to take his computer off its screensaver mode.

"It's pathetic," L said from across the table. "You're going to defile my resting place, yet you can't even do it yourself."

Light had been acutely aware of L's presence as soon as he had stepped into the kitchen, feeling the dead eyes track his paces like a silent metronome, so he wasn't startled by the statement; he was only slightly surprised by the fact that L had taken so long to remark on the plan even as it was discussed right over his head.

"Shut up," Light snapped dismissively, not looking at him. "I can't go myself. I have other things to do. I need to find Misa – I think I'm going to be needing her eyes at some point…"

"Indeed." L glanced at the ceiling. "I think you're too scared to dig up a grave, Light-kun. You needn't be, incidentally. What's left of my corpse certainly won't bite you…"

Light steadfastly ignored him – just because L_ said _there'd be the remains of a corpse in that coffin, it didn't mean that there would be. Maybe it really _was_ the real thing sitting across from him—

No, he couldn't just speculate like this. He needed to know before it drove him mad. Even though, ultimately, he realized that no matter what Matsuda found (or didn't find), there wasn't very much he could do about it. All it was, all it _could_ be, was a way to better understand his enemy. And if he knew _what _L was, then maybe he could find a weakness to exploit. A way to shove him back down the dimensional wormhole he had crawled out of. It had to start with a more intimate understanding of what made L's body tick.

All these possibilities – was he real or a ghost or a merely a puppet stitched together by the remains of a dead man's restless soul and animated by his hatred…? Light just couldn't tell and it didn't seem as though it was the kind of information that L would part with – it seemed stupid to be relying on Matsuda to check out the grave to see if it lay empty or not when L himself was sitting not three feet from him; L the very man who should be able to tell him what he wanted to know, but Light knew that L had no interest on setting him straight on that count.

"You could just tell me," Light said anyway, "and then I wouldn't _have_ to get Matsuda to dig you up."

L shook his head slowly, savoring the denial and the frustration it created in Light.

"I wouldn't even if I could."

Light glanced over at him, eyes narrowed in distaste.

"What do you mean, 'if you could'?" He asked warily.

"I'm not allowed to tell you what I am," the dead detective replied dully. "You may think me a ghost, a zombie, an angel, a demon, even a Shinigami if it pleases you… but I am not allowed to answer you when you ask if you are correct."

"Says who?" Light demanded.

"I'm not allowed to tell you that either."

Light sighed irritably and gave a dismissive wave of his hand.

"Whatever. I'm sure I can find out for myself."

"Always so confident, Light-kun."

"How do you think I got this far?"

L gave a disinterested shrug, got up and wandered away, leaving Light alone at the kitchen table with his laptop.

Light had always considered his father's position as chief of the NPA a vast asset to his cause – a decided advantage over his enemies and, indeed, over anyone else who might have happened to have picked up the Death Note in his place. Kira had prevailed this far not just because of intelligence and resourcefulness, but also because of fate-given stepping stones like these that proved he was the chosen one for the job of cleansing the world.

Quite simply, unless you had access to police equipment, Kira was a tough gig.

Light had access to police equipment.

He brought up the electronic map of metropolitan Tokyo on his laptop screen and set up the tracing program; the tracing device itself was a tiny black plastic box, plugged in via a USB connection, with another small wire running from it that went into the smaller USB port on his phone.

He had no idea why Misa wasn't answering his calls, her silence an eerie anomaly, a blinking misproportion in his plan, but now it didn't matter – even if she didn't pick up he could trace her location using this equipment. He'd figured it was probably better to do it late at night when she'd probably be at home; during the day she could be just about anywhere in the city.

He dialed her number and brought the phone to his ear, listening to it ring as he concentrated on his screen. A small window had appeared over the center of the map reading 'Connecting'; on the fourth ring it changed to 'Connected', and then from there speedily became 'Located'.

The phone was still ringing with no sign of Misa about to answer it, but Light was more interested now in the tiny red pixelated pinpoint that had begun flashing on the map. He clicked on it to enlarge that segment of the map, studying it as the text in the window became 'Retrieving Address'.

So, she was in Shinjuku, was she…?

The address came up in a separate window; The Palace Hotel, Shinjuku, Tokyo.

He knew where that was. It was one of the hotels L had stayed in, back before he'd had the taskforce headquarters built. Really, for someone who didn't want to be found, Misa was making this _way_ too easy for him…

He opened a new window and quickly navigated to the Palace Hotel's official website; from there he found it laughably easy to hack into their database and get into the information bank, in which were details about rooms and customers and payments. He smiled indulgently, his eyes reflecting the red blinking tracer on the screen that betrayed his missing pawn's location; the blood hue that didn't quite fade even when the computer screen was turned off.

'Amane, M' was in Room 234.

* * *

Light turned off his phone in the elevator up to Misa's hotel room floor because the last thing he wanted was Matsuda calling him in the middle of this saying that he'd been arrested for digging up a grave in broad daylight.

With his _fantastic _track record of blunders, Light feared that even with the warrant and the morgue notification, Matsuda probably wouldn't think to flash his police ID and say he was on police business until he'd been escorted to the beat car.

It wasn't a conversation he wanted to have while in the process of wooing Misa back into his graces.

Though maybe the romancing was unnecessary. He still didn't know what to expect from Misa. Maybe there was a valid reason for her to not contact him, maybe this was part of his plan that he had forgotten. Was she deliberately not answering his calls or did he just have a knack of ringing at inconvenient times? But no, surely then she'd call back after receiving 'Missed Call' messages, so maybe she really _was_ ignoring him, but why…?

L had said that he only had half his memories, and agreeably, his mind _was_ rather blank when it came to Misa…

Well, it didn't matter. Even with his uncertainty (Light's least favorite thing in the world), he still had no fears about confronting Misa. No matter what the reason was, he was sure that everything could be explained and worked out and fit neatly back into place. Misa's fierce loyalty trumped all other factors, and he was looking forward to the shallow-watered predictability after so many weeks of dealing with a turbulently fickle L.

He'd tracked her down and now hopefully he'd get some answers. He needed Misa back at his side – her eyes were invaluable to him, and having Ryuk around probably wouldn't hurt either. Ryuk wasn't the brightest crayon in the box, but he had his uses…

He came to Room 234 and paused outside it, tugging his scarlet tie straight and running his fingers through his hair to neaten it up.

L had smirked at him this morning when he'd walked into the kitchen to make his morning coffee dressed like this; he'd smirked at the red tie and he'd smirked at the crisp white shirt and he'd smirked at the fitted black pinstriped suit.

He hadn't said anything; only stared with that leering septic _smirk _that begged not for an explanation, but an excuse to gloat. The silence was only a provocation, and Light had ignored him.

Since he wasn't sure where he stood with Misa, he thought it best to give a good impression on turning up uninvited at the door of her swish hotel room. He was wearing a good mask today – he had stored up an entire internal _bunker_ of patience to put up with Misa all day, if it got him what he wanted.

He knocked smartly on the door and stepped back from it, waiting for her to answer it.

…So he was shocked, to say the least, when Ryuk's ashen bug-eyed face suddenly leaned through the door, staring right at him like a hideous unwelcoming door-knocker.

The Shinigami blinked in equal surprise, eyes turning phosphorous in delighted surprise.

"Light?" He gave a sudden malicious snigger. "Oh, boy, she's not going to be happy to see _you_…"

"I—wait!"

Ryuk vanished back through as the door cracked open just enough to reveal Misa, her smiling face lit up like a halo, while the rest of her was shrouded in darkness of the room.

Her picture perfect smile snapped off the instant she recognized him, and it only took half a second more to vacate all the color from her face as well, until the smudge of her lipstick was the only surviving pigmentation.

"Hey, Misa, I—"

Misa let go of the door, letting it slam in his face.

Light was taken aback by the action; no-one ever slammed doors on _him_. He felt indignant anger begin to bubble up, but knowing that a fight would be detrimental to his cause, he stroked his temper and stepped forward, knocking less politely this time.

"Misa, can I talk to you for a minute?" He said loudly through the door.

"I don't want to talk to you," Misa replied sharply; her voice tightly strung and close, as though she was leaning against the other side of the door. "I don't want to talk to you ever again."

It was true that Light couldn't fathom the reason for this, but thought that it was best to avoid the "Dumb Boyfriend" card – banging on the door and saying that he didn't know what he'd done to make her so mad would just piss her off even more.

"I know that," he coaxed, altering his method, and letting sugar crystallize on his voice, "and I understand, but I _really_ need to talk to you. It'll only be for a moment. Please, Misa?" He leaned his head against the varnished grain trying to get closer to her as vulnerability shivered through his voice; he simply had to wait for it to have its intended effect.

There was silence on the other side of the door for a moment, and then the lock clicked and the door swung open a little, which Light took as a sulky invitation to enter. He slipped into the hotel room and pushed the door shut behind him.

"_Smooth_," Ryuk murmured, passing him. "I'll leave you two alone…"

He vanished through the wall, like a puff of greasy smoke disintegrating into the air, but Light wasn't looking at him; rather at Misa, who was sitting on the edge of the huge bed, looking down at the carpet, her bare feet placed closely together.

She wasn't dressed, instead wearing her short red silk nightgown and white robe. There was a small silver crucifix glinting around her neck that seemed to catch even the smallest gleam in the darkened room. However, that wasn't the most striking thing about her appearance right now. It was—

"…Your hair…?" Light couldn't help but blink at her a few times as his eyes adjusted, thinking perhaps it was simply a trick of the shadows. She was wearing it loose and the style was still the same, but…

"It was dyed anyway," Misa replied flatly, not looking at him, hiding her eyes beneath the now black fringe. "I just let it grow out. You know that."

"You… you look different… with black hair," Light said lamely.

She looked up, eyebrows knitted together over searing eyes; their glaring heat was the only emotion that penetrated the sullen hood covering the rest of her features.

"What do you want?" She asked, her voice low and thick as though she was holding something back, though he couldn't tell what.

Light didn't say anything, just staring at her still. She was completely different to how he remembered her, and it wasn't just because of the black hair. Her demeanor had altered entirely, sharpened, hardened; she seemed much more mature and didn't refer to herself in the third person and although a lot of it was most likely to do with his unwelcome appearance, she didn't seem nearly so bouncy and hyperactive.

"I…" Light shook his head a little, trying to clear the strange fog surrounding the situation. "Do… do you still have… the Eyes, Misa?"

Misa sat up a little straighter, regarding him suspiciously, flint still in her gaze.

"Yes, I do. There's not really a cure for that apart from giving up the Death Note. That's what Ryuk said, anyway."

"Right. Well…" Light cleared his throat, feeling awkward. He shouldn't even _have_ to ask. "…I need them, so—"

"Trade for them yourself, then," Misa snapped, efficiently cutting him off as she jutted out her chin in defiance.

Light blinked at her taken aback by the blatant hostility coiling around her words. Was this really _Misa Amane_ before him? The girl who'd become the Second Kira just so she could meet and thank him for passing judgment on the murderer of her parents; who'd traded _twice_ for Shinigami Eyes just so she could help _him_…?

"But… Misa, you already have them, so what's the point—?"

"Yes, I already have them." Misa stood up, her unexplained anger no longer concealed by the thin veil of morosity. "_I _have them. They're _mine_, and I don't want to use them to help you."

Light was floored by this revelation. Misa… Misa didn't want to help him…?

"Misa, I don't understand," he started gently. "You traded half your lifespan for them so you _could_ help me—"

"And now I've changed my mind." Misa toyed with the little silver cross at her throat. "Don't you understand? Because of you, my lifespan has been shortened twice over, I've been imprisoned, in danger of being executed… I know it was my own doing, but I was following you because I thought you were right." She was shaking her head now, black strands sweeping across her face in an ebony curtain. "But you aren't right, Light. Kira isn't right. I don't believe in your new world anymore, so I won't help you create it."

The paradigm shift had turned into a landslide, and Light couldn't help but flounder under the differences. This revelation, this _discrepancy, _was almost as jolting as the morning L decided to show up. Not quite the same shock factor as seeing someone who is (was) dead, but it was close…

For all Misa had ever annoyed him, what he wouldn't give for the squeaky blonde pigtailed version right now; he might not have been her biggest fan, but she had showed up on his doorstep pre-melted, succumbing to his rhetoric without him even having to explain. He _really_ didn't like this one.

This one had a spine.

Still, Light was adept at winning people over; he was confident he could get Misa back on his side fairly easily. He took a reviving breath, and swore to himself that he would not leave this hotel room without her promise to help him hunt down Mello and Near.

"Come on, Misa," he said softly, taking a step towards her. "How can you have lost faith in me so easily? Look at all we've accomplished together, all the judgments we've passed on the wicked… You belong at my side, and together we'll create a world free of evil that I will rule over as God, and you'll—"

"No!" Misa cried, interrupting him yet again. "No, you're _not_ God! How can you say that; how can you be so arrogant, Light? There is a God, but he isn't you."

Light blinked at her incredulously as the record of this new reality continued to skip and jar him with the offbeats. This Misa was entirely opposite to everything he'd ever categorized her by.

"You're… talking about religion…?"

Misa gripped her crucifix in her fist, turning to face him straight on.

"I know you think that what you're doing is right," she said, talking to him like he was a naughty child, as if he hadn't known any better, "but it isn't your place to judge other people. You aren't God, no matter how much you think you are."

"Since when are you a Christian, Misa?" Light spat, almost more upset by the tone she dared to use, rather than what she was actually saying.

"My parents were, and now I am too," she replied simply. "I find more comfort in Christianity's teachings than I did helping you. I don't believe in Kira anymore, Light."

Comfort? Since when did Misa care for spiritual comfort? She was dependent on personal revenge, and divine justice, the two twining together until they were an indistinguishable force that drove her to believe anything Kira said, drove her to love him no matter what he did…

She still believed in him, she _had _to. There was no way such a core impression could be so easily shaken, at least not without her losing the definition of who she was. The proof of that was held in the fact that she still knew him at all. The fact that she hadn't given up her memories of their accomplishments…

"Why don't you give up your notebook, then?"

Misa shook her head violently, the shimmering black hair capturing Light's unwilling gaze.

"No. I've done terrible things. I need to be aware of them; I need to be repentant for my sins. Besides, it could just fall into someone else's hands. It's safer if I keep it."

"You could destroy it."

Again Misa shook her head, and again Light's eyes were drawn to the inky locks.

"No. I have to keep it. It's my own cross to bear."

Light glared at her uneasily as the reasons continued to slip between his fingers. He knew that this was a front, that there was something more potent lurking beneath the surface that could explain this dramatic reversal. A more compelling reason, one that he was already supposed to know, that was somehow his fault; a reason that wasn't rooted in changed moral ideals or attempts at redemption… He continued to dig, determined to hit a true vein.

"If you're so certain that what I'm doing is wrong, why don't you kill me?" He asked, willing to play Russian roulette to get her back.

Misa's eyes glinted at him with a malice he hadn't thought she was capable of.

"I've been tempted, Light; at least, I was at the start. But I won't take another life, especially not yours. I think you're wrong, but I always swore I'd be loyal to you. I won't go back on that, no matter how much you've hurt me or however many people you've killed."

"Misa…" Light gave a frustrated sigh. "This is stupid. You're my partner in this; the Second Kira. I _need_ you."

"No, you don't. You just want to use me for my eyes. I'm just a tool to you. I know you think I'm stupid, and okay, I'm not as smart as you, but… I can see that you were just using me. I could always see it. I didn't care back then because I loved you and wanted to help you, but I'm not going to be used by you anymore. We're finished."

"Misa, that's not true." Light took another few steps towards her. "Come on, you know I care about you—"

"_No!_" Misa screamed hysterically, the mask finally cracked to reveal the hurt she had been hiding behind her rage. "No more, no more _lies_… Don't act as though nothing happened, as though I walked out on you _just_ because I stopped believing in your ideals…!"

"What?" Light blinked at her, bewildered by something he was supposed to know but _didn't_. "I don't… Misa, what are you talking about…?"

"No, no…! Don't pretend you don't _know_…!" Misa had wrapped her arms around herself as if to hold the ripping seams of her world together. She was stepping away from him, shaking her head violently. "I was good, I didn't kill him… I didn't kill… didn't kill…"

"Misa… _Misa!_" Light crossed over to her and grabbed hold of her shoulders, shaking her even as she shattered in his grasp, legs going limp and arms twisting as she tried to pull away from him. "Stop this. Calm down. I swear, I don't know what you're talking about—"

"You didn't love me. You never loved me…" Misa shivered violently, her head rolling back to pin him with eyes eerily similar to L's glassy gaze. "I knew that, I knew… Rem warned me, but… I thought… I didn't mind if you didn't love me as long as you didn't love anyone else either…"

"Misa, don't be silly." Light tried to put his arms around her. "Of course I love—"

"No, you _don't_!" Misa cried, tears welling in her eyes now as she pushed him away. "You don't, you never did, you loved _him_…!"

Light blinked as the conclusive lightning struck, bleaching everything with the truth she was never supposed to know.

"…Him?"

"_Ryuzaki_," Misa hissed with conviction, her eyes reviving and sparking once again.

"I-I… Misa, I didn't—"

She stiffened in his arms, pulling herself together with renewed fury.

"You haven't truly come here to _deny_ it…?" Misa backed right up against the bed. "Don't lie about it, Light – I _know_ you loved him. I didn't realize it while he was still alive, but afterwards… do you think I couldn't see it? That I didn't know? At night, I could hear you saying his name, while you… a-and sometimes you called _me_ Ryuzaki while we were having sex, and… and I… walked in on you, when—"

"What?" Light blinked at her as the colorful tapestry his lies had woven over the years was so easily unraveled. "You walked in… with… Ryuzaki…?"

"No!" There was a steady stream of tears running down Misa's face now. "With _Matsuda_! Don't you remember? I came back early from that photo shoot in Los Angeles and walked into the bedroom and you were busy… with Matsuda, and—"

"But you just said Ryuzaki!"

"You called _him_ Ryuzaki too!" Misa cried, nearly screaming now as her hands balled up into tight shaking fists. "I don't think he heard you, but _I _did… You didn't care, you were just using him, pretending he was Ryuzaki because obviously _I_ wasn't a good enough simulation…" The words were laced with spite; leaden, self-deriding, and difficult to hear because, strangely enough, they were true. He didn't remember the act, but simultaneously could not deny it happening.

"Misa—"

"I know why, though. I know why…" Misa grabbed at her own ebony hair with straining hands, fingers twisted until they more resembled talons. "It was the _hair_. Matsuda has black hair like Ryuzaki did, I know that because you were running your fingers through it and smiling, you were pretending he was Ryuzaki… and I… _Why do you think I let the blonde grow out, Light?!_ I-I thought… if there was even one thing about me that reminded you of him, the way Matsuda had… you'd want me…"

She let her hair go and gave a shuddering sigh.

"I wanted to kill Matsuda, but I didn't. It wasn't his fault. It was yours. You used him just like you used me. Ryuzaki's the only person you ever cared about other than yourself, and even then…" She glared at Light across the room. "…You made Rem kill him. It made me think… if that's what you would do to someone you loved, what would you do to someone like _me_…?"

"God… _Misa_…" Light rubbed at his temples, unable to think clearly as he was thoroughly beaten down and _dragged _by the revelation; he'd slept with Matsuda, just to pretend that…? "I… look, okay… I _did_ mess about with Ryuzaki. A lot. While were chained together, but… how could you think that that means that I didn't – or don't – love you? Didn't I have you move in with me? Didn't we go out places together? Didn't I sleep with you and buy you things and ask you to marry me—?"

"But you don't _love_ me!" Misa burst out in exasperation. "I'm just an asset to you. The only reason you came here today is because you want to use my Shinigami Eyes. All those others things you mentioned mattered to me back when I was that immature little magazine model, but now… even if you never touched me at all, I'd be happy, as long as you loved me. I'd… I'd even stand at your side, fighting for a cause I no longer believe in, if only you loved me, but… you don't. You really don't. I know that now."

Misa suddenly slouched, as though drained, burnt out by her yelling. Her tear-laden gaze slipped to the floor, which Light took as an opportunity to approach her silently as he changed tactics once again, desperate for a toehold to sway her.

"You're doing a dangerous thing by going against Kira," he said quietly, taking hold of her chin and tilting her face up again. "How can you trust me not to kill you if you can't even trust me not to sleep with other men, hmm?"

"I can't." Misa gazed defiantly at him. "But I'm not afraid of Kira; I'm not afraid of _you_. Kill me if you want, Light. I'm surprised you haven't by now."

He looked levelly at her.

"Give me your notebook, Misa."

"No."

Light, finally unable to contain himself, reached out and grasped her tiny crucifix, tugging hard enough to snap the chain; he threw it across the room angrily.

"That's what I think of _your_ God!" He seethed. "He, if He even exists, just sits about and allows evil to happen. I don't. I do something about it."

"Humans were given free will," Misa replied coolly, unaffected by Light's violent display, even with tears still staining her face. "It is not up to God to decide whether or not they will be good or evil – and it's not up to _you_."

Light was silent for a while, the balance in his eyes tipping precariously, weighing out the pros and cons with same detached logic as Kira.

"I'm probably going to kill you, you know."

For the first time, Misa actually smiled.

"Yes, I suppose… now that Rem isn't here to protect me from you anymore, there's nothing to stop you."

"Give me your Death Note, Misa. Give up your memories, and you have my word that I'll let you live."

"No." Misa shook her head. "Threaten me with death all you want. You should know it's not something I'm afraid of. I traded half of my life twice – you're too afraid to even trade _once_. But I won't give you my notebook."

"I can just kill you and inherit it," Light growled. "I'm offering you a better solution. You get to give up your memories and forget all about it."

"You _could_ do that," Misa agreed, "but _I_ could expose you as Kira."

"…What?" Light blinked at her, not quite registering what he had heard.

Misa tossed her head, shaking off tears as a haughty expression settled in their place.

"I'm an actress now, Light. Quite a famous one. I could cause a lot of trouble for you, especially since we were both held by Ryuzaki a few years ago."

"You'd be arrested too, idiot!"

Misa shrugged, sniffing a bit.

"A small price to pay."

Light stared at her in silence for a moment or two.

"I appear to have been mistaken about you, Misa," he said stiffly. "You're stronger and smarter than I've previously given you credit for."

Misa gave another bitter little smile.

"I learned the hard way." Her eyes narrowed. "If you leave now and stay away from me, I'll keep your secret."

Light let go of her chin, stepping backwards away from here; his brain was working rapidly. He couldn't let it end like this, couldn't let Misa slither out of his grasp so easily, he _needed_ her—

"Alright, I'll go," he said airily, turning away and striding slowly and lazily across the hotel room. "You've made your point, Misa." He found her broken crucifix at his feet by the draped window and bent to pick it up. "But, please… let's not end everything we've been through together on such a bitter note."

He stood, throwing open the heavy curtains with the same motion. The morning sunlight streamed in, caressing his hair into tawny and russet hues, throwing a halo behind his head as he turned to face a blinking Misa. He reached over to the fruit bowl near the bed he'd noticed on his way in; there were only two apples left, which made sense given that Misa had Ryuk for a roommate. He picked one up and held it out for her to see, the dazzling sunlight giving it the appearance of glowing.

"You want to know about Ryuzaki?" He asked softly, approaching her again. "I'll tell you about him. We used to have this thing… it was just a stupid little thing really, something we came up with one night… A love apple…"

"I don't understand."

"It's a token of love. You see…" Light sank his teeth into the fruit, bringing away a chunk of it and eating it. "…This is my apple. I'm enjoying it, but…"

He reached out and took Misa's wrist, turning her palm up and pressing the apple into her hand. He placed her broken necklace on top of it, then closed her fingers around it.

"…I want you to have it. It's sort of a… 'No hard feelings' thing. It _is_ love, you see, if I want you to have the thing I was enjoying."

Misa looked down at the fruit in silence; as Light slipped behind her, putting his arms around her slender waist and leaning over her shoulder in a soft embrace. They were in front of the hotel room dresser; before the mirror, reflecting her in his arms, with hair black as ebony _(like L's; and like Matsuda's…)_ and skin white as snow and the apple clutched in her hands—

"_Look at us, Misa_," Light whispered in her ear. "Look. We belong together. You're my queen. I need you."

Misa still said nothing, looking intently at the picture of herself held covetously in Light's arms; the way, years ago, she'd have _killed_ for him to hold her…

"You once promised me your heart," Light went on, his voice soothing, lulling, full of promises. "You once said that, if you could, you'd tear out your heart and give it to me in a box. I wouldn't ever hold you to that, Misa, but the sentiment of it… the sentiment has always meant a lot to me, you know."

Misa remained silent for a while longer still; then looked at Light's reflection.

"You call this a love apple?" She asked icily; and she dropped it onto the carpet. "More like a _poison_ apple…!"

She wrenched away from him and leaned up against the dresser; the crucifix gripped in her hand and her head bowed and her shoulders shaking as she began to sob once again.

Frustrated, Light reached for her shoulder—

There was a sudden knock on the door; Misa didn't move, but the lock turned and the door opened without her needing to answer it. A small, slender woman in a gray suit, her hair tied back, hurried in, holding a magazine – a publicist or manager or something, Light would guess.

"Ms Amane, look!" She said briskly, waving the magazine as Light backed away. "You won that 'Fairest of Them All' poll in _J-Chic_! Ms Amane…?"

Misa gave a strangled little sob and collapsed to her knees, her entire body wracked with anguished convulsions.

The publicist immediately turned her sharp gaze on Light, who was almost at the door.

"I upset her," he said. "I'm sorry. I'll go."

He made himself scarce, still hearing Misa's sobs after the door had swung shut behind him.

He knew he'd lost his chance with her now. She would never be willing to accommodate him like that ever again. It was a severe blow to his crusade to have lost her – his most powerful pawn – but then again…

…He'd always prepared himself for Misa going out of the equation. She'd always been dangerous; a volatile time-bomb just waiting to go off in his hands.

He'd always known there would come a time when he'd just have to kill her.

* * *

He was sitting back at his kitchen table, the Death Note open on two blank pages before him, idly twirling his pen as he allowed his thoughts to simmer slowly, breaking down the newest developments, when the doorbell rang.

Once. Then twice. Then several more times in a frantic symphony of shrill rings.

Light grabbed the Death Note and slipped it on top of the refrigerator, pushing it right back against the wall so that it was invisible to anyone who happened to walk in here, then went to the door. Whoever was on the other side was still jabbing the button frenetically.

Light hauled open the door irritably…

…Finding Matsuda on his doormat, his eyes wide and rimmed in white panic, his suit covered in mud and dirt and his finger still jabbing the doorbell.

"Light…!" He pounced as soon as the door was out of the way. He grabbed the front of Light's shirt, gripping it tightly with white knuckles. "I tried and tried to call you… your phone is off…!"

"Oh, yeah, I… had something to attend to this morning and turned it off, guess I forgot to…" Suddenly composing himself before trailing off even further, Light grabbed Matsuda's lapel and yanked him into the apartment. "Get in here, idiot."

He shut the door and turned to Matsuda, leaning against it.

"You dug him up," he said simply, glancing over the detective's filthy clothes.

"Yes… I mean, n-no… No, I _didn't_ dig him up, because…" Matsuda looked shakily up at Light. "…It's empty. His grave is empty. You were right, it's been disturbed… The coffin was empty, he's not in it… Ryuzaki's _gone_, Light!"

Light blinked, stun rapidly turning to nausea; then it _was_ the real thing prowling around his apartment like a savage house cat. He had a _reanimated corpse_ for a housemate…

"Look, come in a minute, Matsuda," Light said, exhaling to drive the quaver out of his own voice, and the slick twisting that threatened to overtake his stomach. "I'll make you some coffee."

Matsuda gave a wordless nod; he was still quite breathless, giving the impression that he'd ran at least part of the way here. He let Light put a hand to his back and steer him towards the kitchen as though he had suddenly gone numb after delivering his fateful message.

Light himself was too busy processing the confirmation that Matsuda had brought to even consider him as the man he had slept with… The fact that L had somehow had life breathed back into him, his rotting flesh restored and then managed to drag himself out of his grave without it appearing to have been disturbed was a much more paramount discovery rather than what Misa had been yelling at him only that morning; that L's absence had driven him to seduce Matsuda and take him home with him, solely for the sake of pretending he was the long-gone detective.

Matsuda was a logical choice, incidentally. He was only a year or two L's senior, putting him in the same age category; he was the most likely to react to Light's advances and keep the whole affair a secret; and he had the required black-as-ebony hair.

Not that it mattered right now, when that same black-as-ebony hair was flecked with the dirt of L's grave; and when the man himself was sitting silently at Light's kitchen table, apparently in shock due to his finding that grave absent of its occupant.

"Maybe… maybe Kira dug him up," Matsuda offered eventually, have caught his breath and regained some of his nerve in the quiet normalcy of Light's kitchen, as he watched the younger man clatter about making coffee. "I once read that sometimes, all over the world, the bodies of traitors were sometimes dug up and hung and stuff. Maybe it was Kira or his followers or something."

"I don't think Kira would do that," Light replied, feeling his gag reflex buck at the very thought of it. "Besides, nobody knew Ryuzaki was L except for us."

"Oh, right. Of course." Matsuda gave a weak little laugh. "You're right, Light. That was dumb. Sorry."

"It's okay." Light forced a little laugh of his own, not looking at Matsuda. "At least you're giving it some thought."

"Well… heh… I guess it's not like he really _did_ come back to life and get out of it himself… right?"

"I don't think so, Matsuda." Light stirred the coffee and then laid the spoon aside. "Here, I made it strong for you…"

He picked up the cup and turned around to cross the kitchen to give it to the filthy detective—

And he jerked in surprise and dropped it; it slipped from his slack fingers and fell, shattering on the kitchen floor.

_L was standing right behind Matsuda, unnoticed; smiling blackly at Light._

"Light?" Matsuda leaned forwards, L's presence behind him still utterly unobserved. "What's wrong? Are you alright?"

"I… y-yeah, I'm fine…" Light tore his gaze away from L, crouching down to clear up the mess. "I'm sorry, I just slipped… I'll make you another cup…"

_It's okay,_ he thought, barely able to hear himself over the pounding of his heart. _I'm overreacting, and L's only doing this to unnerve me. I bet Matsuda can't even see or hear him…_

"Will you make me some coffee too, Light-kun?" L suddenly asked, stepping aside from behind Matsuda's chair and hopping up into the one next to it.

_He'd heard him_. Light could only watch in sinking horror as the chain reaction ripped the situation beyond his control. Matsuda's head snapped in L's direction, whiplash and terror visibly draining all the color out of his face as his mouth began to silhouette silent words, and his eyes widened until his pupils resembled catatonic pinpricks.

"Hello, Matsuda-san," L said politely, tilting his head. "It's been a while. How are you?"

L's voice animated Matsuda from his numb shocked state and he suddenly gave a strangled, terrified yell, jumping up and backwards too quickly and stumbling over his chair, falling hard to the kitchen floor, his eyes never leaving L's form.

"Ohmygod… ohmygod…" he breathed, scrabbling away from the kitchen table. "…You're _here_, that's why your grave… that's why… _ohmygod_…"

"You… you can see him?" Light whispered faintly, slowly standing up again, the shattered coffee cup forgotten.

"He was here… he's been here the whole time…?" Matsuda scrambled to his feet, stepping away in fright. "You knew he was here…?!"

"He's been… Matsuda, please listen…" Light tried to approach Matsuda. "He's been here for a while, I can't get rid of him… I don't know why he's haunting me, but I needed to know if it really _was_ him or just a replica or something, so…"

Matsuda backed up against the wall as Light tried to get near him.

"No, y-you stay away…!" Matsuda tried to compose himself, holding his body rigid while staring at Light in horror and disbelief. "You weren't going to tell me he was here! Why were you hiding him? Why haven't you told the task force…?!"

"I can answer that," L said drolly from the kitchen table.

"You shut your mouth!" Light blazed, not even looking at him.

"Light-kun, you are only heightening suspicion against yourself," L replied flatly. He got down from his chair again and came a little closer. "Then again, I presume Matsuda-san knows what I am about to say, anyway. There is only one reason that Light Yagami, previous Kira suspect, would hide the resurrected L from the Kira Investigation task force, isn't there?"

"…_If he was Kira_," Matsuda whispered, wide-eyed, plucking the answer from the air without L even needing to say it. His simple existence was more powerful than any possible words.

"That's enough!" Light thundered; he reached out and grabbed L by his upper arm, dragging him towards the kitchen door. "You, get out! You're frightening him."

He turned to Matsuda on escorting L towards the door.

"I'm not Kira," he said firmly. "I'm sorry, okay; I think being dead drove him a bit mad, he hasn't been right ever since he showed up here—"

L cracked up laughing; doubling over to accommodate for his horrific screeches that coated the room in howling decibels of shattered mirth. Matsuda seemed aghast by the very sight and sound of it, and Light redoubled his efforts to evict L from the kitchen.

"Get _out_, you whack job!" He hissed. "I don't even—"

"Whack job?" L shook his head violently. "You call _me_ mad, yet you think you can convince Matsuda-san of your innocence when your _victim_ stands before him, attesting your guilt? You're the mad one, Light-kun."

"You're _dead_," Light spat. "No-one cares what you think!"

"That doesn't make you not Kira—"

Light shoved him out of the kitchen and pulled the door shut; he turned to Matsuda, who was just staring at him, completely speechless; the ability to put two words together to make a rational thought suddenly as futile as rubbing two sticks together and expecting a fire.

Things had slipped out of Light's control, and admittedly it was a situation he could have avoided. He hadn't thought that L was visible to other people, but now that Matsuda had seen him… it was all he could do to just play damage control and hope it was enough to keep him alive.

"Matsuda, I—" he started.

"It wasn't the Shinigami who killed him," Matsuda interrupted quietly. "It was you. Or, at least… _you_ made her do it. She didn't seem aggressive to me, you know. I always thought it was a bit strange that she would just kill Ryuzaki and Watari for no apparent reason…"

"Matsuda, that's ridiculous—"

"Then why have you been hiding him?" Matsuda whispered urgently, accusation barbing his tongue. "Why didn't you tell us he was here? There's only reason you wouldn't want to bring in the resurrected man who was the only one to suspect you – because he was _right_ to do so. If you weren't Kira then surely you'd be eager to have Ryuzaki back on the team again—"

"Matsuda, he's _dead_! We buried him, remember? Don't talk about it like he just got back from a holiday or something."

Matsuda offered no response other than pushing Light aside and leaving the kitchen.

"Wh…? Matsuda, where the hell are you going…?!" Light followed him out into the hall, finding him opening the front door and sprinting out into the hallway. "Matsuda!"

By the time Light had got out into the hall, Matsuda was gone, with only the resounding sound of his steps in the stairwell marking his presence and after a moment, even those went silent. Light stood in his open doorway, stunned. This had backfired very badly; more than that, it had _exploded _in his face – if only he'd curbed his curiosity about L…

He knew what he had to do now. It was the only thing he _could_ do.

He went back into the apartment, shutting the door; he glanced about for L, but there was no sign of him in the immediate vicinity. The bastard had cleared off after dealing his desired damage, as per usual.

This world was different; it was different, and now he knew that unless he did something about it, those differences were going to spiral towards his destruction.

This was a world in which Misa had lost faith in him; in which Matsuda would readily believe ill of him; in which L haunted him to remind him of his greatest sin.

This world was not just going to fall into his palm – he would have to fight even harder than before to make it his. So it was time to make changes to a world that had already changed against his favor, a world more poisoned than ever before.

It was the only way to win.

It was the only way to survive.

Light took his Death Note down from the top of the fridge and brought it back to the table, opening it again and seating himself before it.

He wrote Misa's name.

He wrote Matsuda's name.

He paused, took a reviving breath, already feeling slightly better, and then laid the pen back to the paper and began to rewrite this world so eager to see Kira fail.

* * *

"When will they be coming to arrest you?" L asked innocently, glancing up when Light came into the bedroom. He was on the floor with the chessboard, rearranging the pieces.

"They won't be," Light growled, throwing open the wardrobe. "I've dealt with it, no thanks to you."

"I may be dead, but I'm still L, and you're still Kira," L responded pleasantly. "I'm here to make life difficult for you."

"Too bad. I'm one step ahead."

"Curses, foiled again," L sighed drolly, going back to his chessboard.

Light ignored his dry humor, digging out the dark canvas camping bag he'd been looking for and unzipping it, throwing it open on the bed. The entire action captured L's attention again; he looked up, blinking as Light went back to foraging through the wardrobe like a starving post-hibernation squirrel.

"What are you doing, Light-kun?" He asked, watching as Light started tearing clothes off their hangers and throwing them over his shoulder haphazardly into the bag. "Or perhaps 'Where are you going?' is a better question."

"I'm going. I can't stay here now. _We're_ going." He paused, looking at L. "You're coming with me. I guess you don't need to pack anything, but if there's anything you want to take with you, go and get it."

"Going?" L echoed, seemingly quite genuinely perplexed by this news. "Where? Why?"

"Don't ask questions!" Light snapped. "If there's nothing you want, just shut up and stay there."

"Are we running away?"

"No." Light threw socks and underwear into his bag, not looking at L. "We're not running. We don't need to run."

"Oh." L's eyes glinted. "Then we're hiding?"

"I told you not to ask questions." Light tossed his laptop onto the bed, flipped it open and turned it on, letting it load up as he continued to pack essentials. "Don't you want any books or anything?"

"No."

Light waved his hand dismissively at him, digging out his portable memory device and shoving it into the USB port. He quickly downloaded everything he thought he would need from it, then used a police program to erase anything remotely suspicious from the hard-drive, so that it was untraceable and irretrievable.

"Aren't you taking your computer?" L asked in disinterest.

"No. I can't." Light shut it down and put it back in its bag, leaning it up against the dresser. "I can't take my phone, either. They can both be traced."

"And why are you worried about being traced? I thought you said you were one step ahead."

"I am." Light smirked. "But this time tomorrow, the authorities are going to think that Light Yagami is dead, and what use does a dead man have for a computer…?"

* * *

Light knew where he was going, and he knew how to get there.

They didn't take the train because he knew there were CCTV cameras in operation and he didn't want his "last" movements recorded.

Instead they walked. It was a long, tiring trek via a remote route, with Light clutching L tightly by the hand to ensure that he didn't make off. L hadn't previously shown any interest in running away, but Light just didn't trust him, and after that whole thing with Matsuda…

It was better to just hold onto him, he decided, dragging him along like a sulky child being forced to go to the dentist.

L had smirked at the hand-holding thing at first, saying it was too late to win him back over by going for a hand-in-hand lovers' stroll, but his risible attitude hadn't lasted very long, and now he was just walking after Light in silence, looking up at the overcast sky.

In fact, he said absolutely nothing at all until—

"Here again, Light-kun?"

"Shut up. It's perfect." Light pushed open the door. "No-one will ever find us here."

"I think I prefer your apartment."

"I don't care." Light shoved him in through the door. "I never invited you to share my apartment in the first place. Besides, there's nothing wrong with this place, it's just out of use. A good clean and it'll be back to the way it used to be."

"Is that so?" L tilted his head. "I don't think I agree."

"That's probably because you've never cleaned anything in your entire life. Or death. Or whatever."

"That wasn't what I meant." L looked at him dully. "You seemed to imply that everything would go back to the way it used to be, back when… well, when we used this building as our headquarters."

Light scowled.

"Don't be idiotic. Of course that isn't what I meant." He waved his hand at L. "I mean, look at _you_. You're a _corpse_!"

"I'd like to respond to that by saying 'And you're Kira', but, of course… that isn't a difference. You were _always_ Kira, Light-kun."

"Yes. I was." Light threw his bag down on the lobby floor. "But this is going to be different. It _is_ different."

He grabbed the front of L's top and pulled him close; pressing up against him despite the discomfort of how cold he was so that he could look into the lifeless eyes that no longer declared him fairest in the land.

"Instead of the Kira _Investigation_ Headquarters," Light murmured, sinking his fingers into L's black-as-ebony hair _(the real thing – Misa and Matsuda had tried so hard, but it just wasn't the same…)_, "…this is now simply the Kira Headquarters."

He smiled, holding L tighter still.

"That's the difference. I'm going to work from here, the place you had built so that you could _catch_ me…"

L shrugged in his arms; reaching into his pocket and taking out the one thing he'd brought from the apartment.

He pressed the ice white queen into Light's hand.

"And this," he whispered, "is the other difference."

* * *

ZOMG, plot… Mwa ha ha!

You know, Narroch and I actually clashed quite a bit over this chapter. I mean, one thing I didn't put up much of a fight about – I didn't write in about Matsuda having a warrant or anything to go dig up L's grave, so Narroch pointed out that it kind of conjured up this ridiculous mental image of Matsuda just strolling down a graveyard in broad daylight with a shovel…

It made me laugh on reflection, anyway. :)

The other thing was with Misa and her "dumping" of Light and her reasoning for it, which is debatably out-of-character… I dunno, it wasn't an abusive fight we had over it or anything, but a definite differing of opinions. Still, I'm kind of glad we didn't agree on it because we both had the opportunity to put our personal viewpoints on the situation across and I think it resulted in a better final outcome in the form of this chapter.

Anyway, it's important to remember that this is a "universe" different to the one that had existed beforehand – one that does not favour Light's victory, exactly, so things have changed. Example: He falls out of Misa's favour in a way that could be considered OOC in the normal _Death Note_-verse, but, I mean… At this point you'll have noticed that this fic has technically gone a little AU, so…

Narroch also found the whole LightxMatsuda tilt on things hilarious. Though, for the record, it's not something I just threw in for no reason; I was planning this in advance. A couple of you questioned a line in _Black Opera_, that went as follows:

'…_He'd loved him more than anything, wanted for nothing more than that white-as-snow skin and black-as-ebony hair, __**needed**__ it just stop himself from falling apart, so badly that after L's death he'd… he'd even—'_

That cut-off line refers to (or would have referred to) Light's little "fling" with dear Matsuda.

:P

Okay, well… That's that, I guess. Our forum is open as usual for any burning questions you might have.

- RobinRocks and Narroch xXx

P.S: Next chapter… oh, you guys are gonna _love_ it! Seriously. …We hope.


	22. Heart Sick

**Narroch: **Sorry about the wait! It was longer than normal because I had to rebuild my computer (it is now fast as lightening! Gaha!). BUT! We have updated now, and that it what really matters.

**RobinRocks: **Yes, yet another of Narroch's famous mile-long procrastinations. This was actually supposed to be updated on Monday 26th May – and this, you must understand, was a deadline set by Narroch, not me.

Gyah, never mind… At this point I guess I shouldn't be surprised. O.o

**Narroch: **We sincerely hope you like this one, we worked extra hard on it… You have no IDEA how long this chapter has been kickin around in the woodworks. :)

**RobinRocks: **UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE CENTURY. The BIG thing that happens in this chapter was actually one of the things I kept from Narroch as well – she only found out about it when I sent her the draft of this chapter. :D She squealed a lot and liked it very much, which I took as a good sign.

But yeah, to say this particular part of the story has been a long time in the shop is a vast understatement. It's one of the first things I came up with, andandand…!

Well, I am confident that you will like it. We both are, very much so.

Thankyou to: **The Sacred Pandapuff, Skyhe, LostPharoah, Mask of Mirage, WhiteWolfCub, DoYouFindMeDreadful, CheeseFaerieXXL, Strange and Intoxicating-rsa, Lawliet's Angel, Moonya, Nyx-Zephyrus, AutumnDynasty, Oztan, Fouloldron, Potassium **(oh, Potassium… _ha_…)**, Yukiko Tsukishirou, Tobi Tortue, Layalas, hyperRme, anja-chan, Neko-chwan, Pluto, Ayachan, Rubysp, Liviania, PikaNecoMico, narni4eva, tsuki aoi usagi, TwistedLilBarbie, Olynara Sedai, shad0wform, Hikari Daeron, Insane Author, ProfessorKatze, WingedBonnie, .fallen.angels.wings., Aqua, Fool4Sasuke33, ToNightIamgone, Kaiji, Hitokiri Musei, Stargirl7, Scripta Lexicona, animeXmangaXobsessed **and **Frathworth and Butts**!

**Also: **I changed the poll in my profile again, asking what kind of ending you'd prefer in _Poison Apple_. This is kind of an unfair poll since the ending of the fic has kind of already been sketched out, more or less, so I have to say that an overwhelming vote for "Happy Ending", for example, won't really have any effect on the outcome.

But I _am_ very interested to see what you'd all prefer. :)

This chapter: Ryuk, the full extent of Light's plan concerning Misa, and… L.

Heart Sick

Light lay still, comfortably hammocked between the hazy realm of dream and waking. The warm orange glow seeping through the back of his eyelids nudged at his conscious, prodding him with the information that he must have slept in since the sun was already up. His mind, still weighed down by the heavy folds of sleep enshrouding him, rebelled against the incentive to get up, countering with the fact that he had had a very late and eventful night, and thus deserved a lie in; though what it was he had _done_ exactly was still tucked out of the view of his consciousness. But it was enough to satisfy his normally insatiable work drive and he rolled over onto his back, nesting further beneath the drowsy heat of the blankets in order to get more comfortable.

This maneuver however was quickly aborted once the orange sunrise warming his face was neatly blocked by a shadow, and he felt a squeaky breath fanning over him. The last dredges of sleep were rinsed away by the sensation, and he cracked one eye open to mumble a useless death threat at L. However the sight that greeted him was not a disgruntled detective leaning over him, but rather a row of serrated teeth jutting precariously out at unnatural angles, the points sewing together the edges of a face that had its skin stretched too tightly across the bone, forming a permanently mangled smile, with jaundiced eyes that bulged out of the bounds of their sockets. It was something straight from a taxidermist's nightmare, and it was enough to skyrocket Light out of his own dreams with the same shock factor as a bucket of ice water.

All those months of having Ryuk as a roommate – years ago, back when he'd first picked up the Death Note and begun his campaign as Kira under the radar – had done nothing to make Light immune to the sight of the Shinigami's needlish grin being the first thing his eyes met with upon opening them. Ryuk had always had a rather sinister habit of leaning over him while he slept, with the same dull curiosity of a shark, unintentionally terrifying in his innocent observations. His jagged features always gave Light an awakening far more effective than any alarm clock the moment he stirred and let his eyes flutter open a little against the morning sunlight.

Though perhaps this morning it startled him more than it ever would have before, given that he hadn't been woken up by Ryuk in many months and also by the fact that the Shinigami hadn't even been in the building when he'd fallen asleep.

Light's initial fright melted away as he glared at Ryuk, though his heart was still jackhammering away against his ribcage.

"Don't _do_ that," he snapped, anger flaring up through his voice as he attempted to cover his discomposure. "I've told you and _told_ you not to do that."

Ryuk snickered, rocking to and fro like an ugly, overgrown elf precariously balanced on the armrest at the end of the couch Light had previously been curled up on in a nest of blankets.

"Aren't you even going to say hello?" He asked gleefully from his gravity-defying perch. "It's been a while."

"Spare me, Ryuk." Light's eyes narrowed into glaring hooks, catching at the Shinigami's wandering attention. "Where is it?"

"What? The Death Note, or—"

"The Death Note."

Ryuk reached a long, clawed hand down to the small leather satchel in which his own Death Note was snugly kept; he opened it, taking hold of the second notebook he'd crammed in there and winching it free. He held it out to Light across the couch.

"You have two now, right?" Ryuk asked. "This one and the one you inherited from Rem."

"Right." Light took the notebook – Misa's notebook – and ran his fingers across its soft black cover with a victorious smirk. "There are three Death Notes currently in this world, Ryuk. I now have two of them. The third one is in police custody – that's my original one. It was apprehended back when we caught Higuchi."

"How careless of you," Ryuk's grin widened, showing impossibly more teeth.

"Do you think so?" Light tilted his head, and decided to humor his old roommate with an explanation of human actions the Shinigami always seemed to find so interesting. "At the moment, I think it's better that way. The physical proof and incarceration of Kira's killing tool lets the authorities and world leaders think they have a foothold against Kira – it stops them taking any desperate and unforeseeable measures. When the time is right, I'll take it back."

Ryuk swallowed the information without comment, and instead hopped off the end of the couch to cavort around the room, intentionally kicking up swirling eddies of dust even though he could walk normally without disturbing anything. Light took it as a silent hint of what Ryuk thought about their new living conditions. Perhaps the grunge simply reminded him of the dilapidated Shinigami Realm, Light mused.

While the old investigation headquarters was not in disrepair, it was rather dusty and dirty from a few years' neglect, full of covered furniture and stale air. It would need to be cleaned down before it was properly livable again. Light planned on doing that today; last night he'd simply gathered up some blankets from one of the storage closets a few floors up and made himself a bed on the couch of the office that had been the official Kira Case HQ.

This ceiling, this floor, these walls… They'd seen the beginning of his and L's relationship; and they'd seen the end of L's life.

Incidentally, he didn't know where L was. He refused to come into this room, slinking by the door with a rigid back and a menacing air, as if daring Light to try and force him to enter once again. Light did not bother, knowing he had already played that card and if he attempted it again there would be unwanted retribution. The emotional static in the room had not dissipated, even after their revisit; and now that they were taking up residence here, the air was more charged than ever.

It was one thing to take a quick dip in the pool of memories the building held, for the sake of inducing some emotional damage; but it was another thing entirely to attempt to reenter the flow of their previous existence confined within the building. The familiarity was dangerous; daily routines of their old life reverberated through the walls and jarred open their barely scabbed-over wounds. Whether intentional or not, they were both avoiding falling into the sway of those old habits; which was why L banned himself from the main room, and why Light had curled up to sleep on the couch rather than the bed.

It was the reason why they avoided _each other. _

In fact, Light hadn't seen L since last night. He was fairly confident he was still in the building somewhere – even if the dead detective _had_ suddenly decided to make a run for it, Light had initiated the lock-down on all the doors leading outside, scrambling the pass codes. The only way L could get out was to smash a window – something that would trigger the alarms throughout the whole building. And since those alarms lay silent, Light was in no hurry to go hunting for L. He must be in here somewhere, on one of the thirty-odd floors in this building he'd had built whilst alive for no other apparent reason than because he wanted to fling his money out on a high-tech HQ.

"I've never looked around this place properly," Ryuk said when he'd quite finished his cavorting. "What brought you back here?"

Light gave a shrug.

"Convenience. Privacy." His mouth twitched into a malicious little smile. "Spite, too, I guess."

Ryuk tilted his head, grin unceasing.

"You haven't changed at all, Light. I'm glad. You're such good fun."

"Well, I'd hate to disappoint you, Ryuk." Light paused. "Did you bring…?"

"Yeah, I got it. Dunno what you would want it for though…" Ryuk pulled a repulsed face, momentarily converting his eternal smirk into a half-grimace bearing teeth. "Kind of gross, I gotta say. I was surprised."

"You sure are cowardly for a god of death, Ryuk."

"Hey, I just do my job."

"Just give it to me, will you?"

"Sure, sure. Sheesh…" Ryuk reached down again, clawed fingers rummaging around in one of the leather pouches hanging from his belt. He brought out a small-sized box. "I wasn't just putting _that_ in my pocket. I took one of her jewelry boxes to put it in. Human blood stains, you know."

Light held out his hand for the wooden box and Ryuk dropped it into his outstretched palm.

"What are you up, anyway?" The Shinigami inquired curiously. "She sure behaved oddly last night before she killed herself."

"I'll show you my notebook in a minute. Be patient, Ryuk." Light cautiously loosened the metal clasp, breaking the seal the varnished edges had formed, and slowly lifted the top, even as a dark liquid dripped sluggishly from the inside of the lid, and the hinges gummed on something unseen. He recoiled a little from the revealed sight even though he'd known what to expect, and his insides still roiled into thick repulsed knots. He was silently grateful that he had not yet eaten breakfast before being presented with the _gift_, as the sight and smell took turns bouncing on his gag reflex.

"Well," he added, a little faintly, drawing his arm back "she kept her word. She promised me her heart in a box… and here it is."

"Yeah, it was more difficult to get it out of her than you'd have thought…"

The interior of the box was dark, every surface smeared in black human pitch that slowly dribbled down the sides and pooled in the corners. Little flecks and thin strings of veins were peppered throughout the blood, making it thick and lumpy, a squalid mess of fleshy islets in a sea of slowly drying blood. However, it was the stolen heart itself which drew and captured his gaze. The slack flesh and empty veins had weakened the internal structure, and the heart had collapsed under its own weight, deflating like a grisly balloon. Now it was just an inside-out lump of muscle laced with reds and purples, covered here and there with a nearly transparent underskin which was as thin as gossamer, and ripped just as finely. The organ still glistened with a dull dry shine, still trembled when the box was moved, as if willing to spring back to life.

Light could clearly see the evidence of Ryuk's struggle cutting Misa's heart out – the aorta and vena cava were messily slashed, the ends crimped and mangled from the strain and the snap as it was tugged out. The body of the heart itself was a little punctured, presumably by the Shinigami's claws as he'd gotten a grip on it to tear it out. The whole muscle was clotted with near-black congealed blood, and saturated in a small pool of the same.

Light snapped the box shut again to close off the rancid tang of dead flesh before it filled and infected the rest of the room. He took a steadying breath before turning back to Ryuk with determined victory smile etched onto his face, despite his suddenly too pale complexion.

"It's a perfect crime, you know," Light gloated hesitantly, still clamping down on his convulsing throat and bucking stomach. He swallowed forcefully, and took another deep cleansing breath before continuing. "Misa Amane reveals herself to be the second Kira by "writing down" the names of all of the members of the Kira taskforce, before killing herself. Her heart is mysteriously cut out from her chest without even breaking the skin – obviously not something she could have done herself – but there the trail ends. The theft of her heart was carried out by a Shinigami, an untraceable creature with no fingerprints, footprints, skin flakes or any other kind of biological clue."

At this point, Light reached under his pillow with his free hand and pulled out his own Death Note, holding it out to Ryuk.

"Here, take a look."

Ryuk took the notebook, sharp talons carefully flicking through it to the last-used page – finding a page-worth of detailed written instructions as well as an entire list of names.

_Misa Amane, Suicide, 11:40pm_

_Before committing suicide, takes a piece of lined notebook paper as similar to the pages of the Death Note as she can find and writes on it the following names:_

_L Lawliet, body not found_

_Quillsh Wammy, body not found_

_Shuichi Aizawa (11:30pm)_

_Hideki Ide (11:30pm)_

_Touta Matsuda (11:30pm)_

_Kanzo Mogi (11:30pm)_

_Soichiro Yagami (11:30pm)_

_The true name of the real Kira (this latter fact not being revealed), body not found_

_Amane then takes another sheet of this same lined paper and writes the following:_

_I am the Second Kira. I believe fully in Kira's new world and renounce all other gods but Kira. All who go against Kira must perish, and this is why I have chosen to take my own life, and take with me all of the members of the current Kira taskforce, including L. I have also destroyed my Death Note to prevent it from falling into police hands. In this sacrifice, I protect and preserve Kira's new order. _

_Amane leaves these two sheets together where they will be found quickly. On a third sheet, she writes the following:_

_Ryuk, bring me her Death Note and her heart. I trust you'll be able to find me. The fun is only just beginning. Please destroy this note when you have read it._

_Amane gives this note to her attached Shinigami before killing herself whichever way she chooses._

"Impressive," Ryuk mused, snickering again in delight at Light's daunting amount of forethought. It was stunts like this that kept the human realm so interesting.

Light smirked.

"If nothing else, it completely eliminates suspicion of me," he said. "The Second Kira "wrote" my name down. If the Kira killings continue after Light Yagami is "dead"… It's perfect. Kira is now a completely faceless god – a justice machine with no civilian identity. They can't catch me now – there's no-one to catch. I no longer exist in the system."

"You killed your own father," Ryuk pointed out, ignoring Light's success in order to tear at and draw amusement from the more tender and succulent pain he had brought upon himself.

Light shrugged, almost a little too quickly, like a reflex.

"I had to. It's not like I wanted to, but it would have looked odd if the Second Kira had killed everyone on the task force except for him."

"You can never see your mother or sister again." Ryuk immediately switched gears, still probing for any regrets, any pain.

Light smiled, ignoring the bait and yet not understanding the damning consequences to his own personal humanity by doing so. Maybe it was ironic that Ryuk was so surprised by his total lack of empathy concerning his own flesh-and-blood – though whether it was ironic _because_ he was surprised, given that Light had by now killed two of his lovers, or ironic simply because a _Shinigami_ was aware of such inhumanity when Light himself was not, was not quite certain.

"Yes, I can. Not now. Maybe not for a long time. But when Kira is accepted by the entire world, when my order is _the_ order… I do plan to reveal myself. And when I do, I can see them again, and they'll be proud of me, don't you think?"

Ryuk shrugged, sending the fronds about his shoulders waving in dismissal.

"I don't care." He handed the notebook back before sniffing thoughtfully at the air. "You got any apples around here?"

"Not at the moment, no. I'll get you some later."

The Shinigami gave a shake of his head, chains jangling softly.

"I don't get it, Light," he confessed. "You're "dead". What're you gonna do about food and money and stuff?"

Light grinned at him, genuinely proud of how neatly he had slipped through the cracks of society and yet still managed to attach an umbilical cord and covertly milk the system for all it was worth.

"Don't worry about any of that. I'm a good hacker. I can get money out of my own account and then change the details so it doesn't look like there's been any activity. If the worst comes to the worst and my account closes due to "inactivity" – or my mother moves the money – I can just get it from her account." Light gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "Don't sweat it, Ryuk. I thought this all through before I even put the pen to paper yesterday. It's bullet-proof. All I really need to do is get rid of Mello and Near _before_ they start causing me trouble and everything else will just fall into place."

Ryuk paused, processing this; then finally pointed a claw at the box he'd brought.

"Then what's with the heart?"

Light entertained a small ugly smile as he drummed the lid of the box with his fingertips, and then picked it up again.

"It's just a little present for someone special…" He tossed off his blankets completely and got up, invigorated by the way his plans were falling into place before his feet. "I'm going to get some coffee. Are you coming?"

Ryuk gave another noncommittal shrug, feathery fronds fanning from his neckline visibly moving with the action, and floated out of the room after him, following him upstairs to the kitchen he and L had used during their time here.

The kitchen itself was dull and drab from the sunlight struggling to get in through the dust-layered windows; there were several coats of dust on everything, but Light was confident that a good wipe down would have it back to the way it had once been.

"You're seriously shacking up here?" Ryuk commented loudly. "It's filthy."

"It's just out of use, that's all." Light gave a snort as he opened one of the cupboards and rummaged around for a cloth. "What do you care, anyway? The Shinigami Realm sounds much worse than this."

"It is. That's why I cleared off."

"Whatever." Light went to the windows and smeared a large clear track through the grime; at once the entire kitchen brightened, daylight streaming in through glass that was now transparent as opposed to near-opaque. "There, see? It's better already."

"Uh-uh." Ryuk shook his head, pointing at the kitchen table. "Now you can just see the dust in here better."

"Oh, shut up." Light put the little box down on said table, then tossed down the rag next to it, before going back to the cupboard to get the kettle that had been wrapped up in newspaper and shoved in here following L's death. He pulled the newspaper off and threw that onto the table too, taking the kettle over to the sink. "At the end of the day, it's not like I have to clean this entire place. There are really only four rooms I need – the investigation office, the bedroom, the bathroom, and in here, the kitchen."

"Lucky you had somewhere to go, huh?"

"Well, this place _is_ just going to waste." Light twisted the tap; it gurgled, and then the water spurted out in a sudden explosive jet, tinted amber in color.

"That doesn't look healthy," Ryuk observed.

"It's just a bit of rust from disuse. It'll go clear in a minute."

They both stood still for a moment, comfortable in the relative silence as they watched the tainted water drain away. Light knew something was forming in the Shinigami's mind, he could tell from the way his yellow eyes turned on him, phosphorous with cruel curiosity.

"You really _haven't_ changed at all, Light. Killing your social identity, your comrades, even your own father… You're still willing to throw away everything if it gets you what you want."

"That's not true, Ryuk." Light twisted the tap back and forth, getting rid of the last of the rusty residue. "I haven't thrown away everything."

"Sure you have. What about that university you worked so hard to get into? I thought you wanted to study law and go into the police and stuff? You can't do any of that now. What are you going to do about a job?"

Light smiled, filling the kettle with water and plugging it in to boil.

"That's easy. In my position, who needs that stupid university? And no," he added, heading Ryuk off, "I'm not talking about Kira."

"Then…?"

"When L died, I inherited his title. _I've_ been L for the past three years."

"Yeah, but you just "killed" him," Ryuk said, confused by the dots that just were not connecting. "When the authorities find that written list and note in Misa's hotel room, L will be publicly declared dead."

"Ah, but… I'll tell you something interesting about L, Ryuk. He wasn't _just_ L. He had alter-egos – not only was he the world's best detective, he was also the second and third best through aliases. So when I inherited his alias of 'L', I also inherited his aliases of 'Eraldo Coil' and 'Deneuve'. Like L, nobody ever saw either of them – except Yotsuba, and that was Aiber acting as Coil anyway, and I killed all of them three years ago, so I'm safe on that count. Anyway, all I have to do is start acting as Deneuve and Coil and I have a job with income. Additionally, this is a perfect opportunity to get back in charge of the Kira investigation again. L is "dead", right? He was the best detective in the world, so he was assigned to the Kira case – now that he's dead, who will the world turn to next?"

Light watched in haughty amusement as realization suddenly connected in Ryuk's face. It was a transparent expression he never grew tired of.

"…The second best?"

"Right." Light smiled. "Coil or Deneuve. I don't know which is which, L never bothered saying…"

Ryuk gave a nod of approval, pleased with the interesting and intricate plan. Light rarely disappointed…

"You really thought this through, didn't you?"

"This is my second shot at this, Ryuk. I lost the first time, and it was a mistake – but if I lose the second time, then I'm simply a fool. Incidentally, there are a lot of things I can't remember, but I know that Mello and Near got close to me through the taskforce and my acting as L. This time around, I've eliminated all of those factors. It's impossible for them to find me. The only connection that Coil has to the Kira case is that "he" investigated the Yotsuba Kira – and Deneuve has no connection at all."

Light had made his coffee by this point, and was leaning up against the sideboard, sipping at it contentedly.

As was his usual uncanny knack, L showed up in the doorway of the kitchen, slowly pouring into the room as though drawn there via osmosis by Light's speaking of him. His gaze immediately swiveled in the direction of Ryuk, and he tilted his head to critically examine their new guest at a forty-five degree angle.

"Another Shinigami?" He inquired dully.

"Oh, L, yes, of course," Light said, feigning extreme politeness. "You and Ryuk haven't met. At least not properly. Ryuk is the Shinigami who was attached to me back when I first started being Kira. Incidentally, he was standing right behind me a lot of the times we met. A pity you weren't able to see him, hmm?"

Ryuk's tuberous eyes bulged even more, and he snickered low in his throat, sounding like a rusty hinge. It was not quite clear as to what he was laughing at, exactly; Light's unkind mocking of L, or the fact that L was even here at all, or…

"He's going to be staying here with us from now on," Light continued, with the casual air of someone talking about an elderly uncle moving in with the family. "I hope you don't mind."

The "elderly uncle" danced forward with a delighted jig, capering around L in a circle, grinning at him.

"My, my, _this_ is interesting, isn't it…?" He observed gleefully, unable to contain yet another unkind rusty giggle.

L only glanced briefly at Light before beginning to turn and leave the kitchen again.

"Wait, L…!" Light put down his coffee and caught him up, grabbing his icy wrist. "I… have something for you." He pulled L, ignoring the cagey tension in his arm and the way he held back from the movement; guiding the balky detective over to the kitchen table where the tiny box lay innocently, waiting. Light yanked L in front of him and then gently lifted him around the waist and seated him on the dusty surface, watching as the motes wafted up around then, tickling his nose and gently catching the sunshine.

Ryuk was standing back, observing the scene like a vulture ready to swoop down and tear at the remains of humanity.

L glanced at Light warily and tried to get down again, though the younger man blocked his path.

"Just stay there," he said liltingly, taking up the box and opening it towards himself, so that the open lid hid what was inside from L's point of view. "It's just a little present. You'll like it."

Light could sense L tensing up, feel his cold, lifeless eyes narrow, and knew that he was probably only moments away from going for his eyes or his throat; quickly, before any thought or disgust could paralyze him, Light plunging his hand into the reeking box and grabbed the cold wet muscle that gave slightly under the pressure of his fingers. He lifted Misa's heart from the box, taking L's limp hand and placing the severed organ into it, closing his fingers around it.

"Does _this_ get a reaction out of you, then, you bastard?" He hissed in his ear. "It's Misa's heart. I had Ryuk bring it here especially for you…"

For a long, silent moment, L gave no reaction at all except his sudden unmovable rigidness. He appeared to have completely frozen, whether with anger, or shock, or revulsion Light couldn't tell; L just stared with wide yet noncommittal eyes at the cold gelatinous blob dripping in his hand. Then, just as Light was about to furiously grab him by the shoulders and shake him, _anything _to wring some spark from the man, he started to move again. But it was a strange slow motion, completely sapped of volition; as though he was a clockwork doll that had wound down and then had the key tightly twisted back up again – a predetermined set of motions designed for one purpose.

He raised the arm holding the heart, moving it as if it wasn't attached to him, and used his other free hand to slowly snake under the hem of his shirt and lift it up a little. The hand loosely clutching the heart methodically went up underneath it, the ascending motion of it visible against the white material as trailing red stains bloomed darkly on the cloth.

"Wh-what the hell are you _doing_, you freak…?" Light breathed, so horror-struck by this bizarre turn of events that he couldn't even back away.

Behind him, Ryuk began to giggle delightedly.

L's hand stopped – Light could see that he was holding the heart in roughly the same position as his own – in the center of his chest, bearing slightly to the left. The blatant symbol of L's desire caused a twist in Light's _own _heart, suddenly struck by how defeated he looked, trying to fruitlessly regain the one thing that was irreparable: His fragile human heart that Light had already broken twice over. This wasn't what Light had expected, and he didn't know how to react to the glazed unmoving eyes that reflected nothing but regret.

Light reached forward to grip L's shoulder, and try to gently pry his heart-clenching hand out from under his shirt. It had been a cruel thing to do, but Light had been anticipating cruelty in return, not this display of remorse and childish attempts to replace his own unbeating heart. He had wanted anger, vehemence, a speech on Justice perhaps, any scrap of passion as proof for a job well done. L was not supposed to just meekly accept his taunts like this…

Just as he had worked his own palm beneath the shirt, sticky with blood and sweat, he suddenly felt L give a sharp thrust inwards with his hand. The bulge of the heart against his shirt vanished, and Light could feel the tendons in the back of L's hand instantly tighten into convulsing cords as he jerked forward uncontrollably with a wrenching scream that drenched the room with the sound of utterly indescribable agony .

The first sign of any sort of physical pain L had displayed since coming back here.

Light couldn't make a sound, instead recoiling violently as L's initial scream died off, but continued nonetheless with silent shrieks as his jaw popped and bit uselessly at the air. His eyes were rolled back, only the dark rims visible as he reached blindly for Light, clawed fingers trembling, even as the younger man stumbled away in terror.

"What… what is he _doing_…?" Light gasped to Ryuk. "D-did he just shove his hand into…? That _heart_, did he…?"

Ryuk gave no answer, sniggering to himself; his cackles darted haphazardly through the scene, filling the blanks that L's silent convulsions left. L's hand slid back out from underneath his top, painted deep dark red by the blood of the heart that had now completely vanished from his grasp. His breathing was very rapid and shallow as he swayed a little before completely toppling forwards off the table towards the kitchen floor.

It seemed to be a natural reaction of Light's, to dart forwards and catch L when he was falling; he didn't even think about it right now as he caught him around the torso before he smashed his skull on the hard floor.

He didn't think about the fact that L was dead, so it wouldn't hurt him; or about what L had just done that had made him back off so speedily in the first place. It seemed that he was doomed to forever play the role both that caught and caused L's fallings.

However, he wasn't at all prepared for how he felt in his arms.

_He was warm._

Light numbly laid him on the floor, before drawing his hands back in alarm. L was completely still, his eyes closed, as though he'd died all over again. In fact, he still _looked_ dead, but that didn't mean much since he had always been that way, even back when he was undoubtedly alive. Perhaps that glow he felt was a mistake, a miscalculation, his mind playing tricks on him again by looping wishful thinking with his incoming sensations… Ignoring the laughing Shinigami floating behind him, Light hesitantly reached out and pressed the back of his hand to L's pale cheek only to snatch it back immediately like he had been burned. L _was _warm! But what did that mean? And the heart…? Light gingerly reached up once again, grasping the hem of the white top as L himself had done, resolving to pull it up to see—

To see _what_? If L had really plunged that heart into his own body? It seemed ridiculous, but then again…

…What else could have happened? It definitely _looked_ as thought he'd shoved his hand into his own chest, and where was the heart now…?

His mouth tightened into a little line and he started to lift L's shirt; startled into giving a little cry of fright when L's hand suddenly lashed upwards and grabbed his wrist, stopping him—

Though it wasn't the usual feeling of five icy clamps digging into his skin; his hand was warm, as though he was…

L opened his eyes and sat up, pulling on Light's wrist to anchor himself. He gave his head a little shake, then grimaced.

"What happened?" He asked, rubbing his left temple. "Did I faint?"

His tone sounded completely different – still blasé, as it had always been, but without the iciness of this new resurrected version.

"I…" Light faltered; instead, at a loss, pressing L's hand between his own. "…You're warm."

L's eyes opened again, and this time he turned fully to face Light.

"Shouldn't I be, Light-kun?"

Light blinked at him, barely listening as reality shifted onto its other foot and he realized…

…_that he could see his reflection in L's eyes_.

Still not answering him, Light grabbed L by his shoulders, hauling him close so that he could see him properly; grasping his hair to hold him still whilst he looked long and hard into those mirrors that had reemerged from their dormant, shattered state. The twin orbs dilated, offering up two tiny gleaming replicas, as well as a swell of emotions that the dead L had been incapable of producing. Curiosity, amusement, confusion – they were all swimming through his dusky vision.

"What are you doing?" L inquired after a long moment, breaking his concentration.

"Where's the heart?" Light bit out, the only question he could formulate since he found himself unable to breathe a word about L's precious mirror mirror eyes; afraid that if he questioned their sudden and unexplainable existence, they would simply shatter beneath his doubt.

L blinked at him as the confusion took precedence.

"What heart, Light-kun?"

"Don't screw with me, L," Light snapped in frustration, refusing to be swayed by yet another one of L's sick mind games; refusing to be done in by the liquid soul now on display, even as tiny spider feet danced along his spine – excitement, nervousness, denial… "Where's the heart? What did you do with it?"

"I told you to call me 'Ryuzaki'," L responded, seeming genuinely baffled, "and I don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps Light-kun is over-worked. We have been pulling a lot of late nights recently, what with trying to catch Kira and—"

"_What?!_" Light _stared_ at him, thunderstruck by the sudden unexplainable regression.

L stared right back, one eyebrow raised up in a questioning arc while his eyes widened in bewildered disapproval. After a short bout of awkward silence, L seemed to decide something to himself since neither one of them was giving an explanation.

"Perhaps we should worry less about me and more about you," he said. "Are you feeling alright, Light-kun? Perhaps you should lie down."

Light didn't respond to this, instead pulling L forwards again and pressing his ear to his chest.

There it was. A heartbeat. A definite, even, two-tone heartbeat.

…Alive? Was he… truly _alive_…? Had he put Misa's heart into his own chest and…?

The revelation, overpowering illogicality once again, rushed through Light in dizzying shots of joy, panic, and blind groping confusion; but above all a surreal and terrifying awe from the warmth of his chest, and the glitter of his eyes. The moment was still punctuated with Ryuk's staccato cackles and Light turned to him and hissed at him to shut up.

"Who are you talking to, Light-kun?" L asked warily, glancing behind Light and tilting his head.

"I… I-I…" Light stared at him all over again, drinking in the concern plainly visible on L's face. Concern for _him_.

_Can't he see Ryuk? He could see him a minute ago…_

"I think Light-kun needs some kind of medical attention," L decided, his eyes narrowing a little. "I will call Watari and see what he recommends…"

Light watched him go to his pockets to hunt for his phone; watching the scene as though it was L on the stage and him in the audience. It felt detached, unreal, untouchable. This couldn't be just an act. L was a remarkable actor, and definitely cruel enough to pull a stunt like this – pretend he was alive again, just to upset Light – but this was just _too good_. There wasn't a hint of his undead impassive coldness in his eyes or his voice, and even if that alone wasn't enough to draw a conclusion upon…

There was nothing to explain the warm skin; the heartbeat; the full spectrum mirrors in his eyes. They were all traits that distinguished the alive L from the dead one – they were things that the dead one couldn't reproduce. It was impossible for him to have a heartbeat because his heart no longer worked…

But even under the weight of the evidence, stubborn logic still nosed its way through. Was he really supposed to believe that L – a reality-bending walking corpse as it was – had taken the heart of a murdered girl and put it into his own chest, thus bringing himself fully back to life…?

"I must have left my phone in the bedroom," L sighed, coming up from his quest into his pockets empty-handed. "Come on, we'll have to go and get it…"

The bedroom…? The bedroom that, at the moment, lay deserted and dust-covered…?

L propped himself up and stood, with Light numbly rising after him, dragged by the magnetism of L's new vivaciousness. But then the detective looked down in puzzlement, holding up the wrist that had once had a handcuff on it.

The one that was absent of a handcuff now.

"Where are the handcuffs?" He asked, looking at Light's naked wrist.

Light gave a silent helpless shake of his head – his mouth opened, but he couldn't formulate a plausible excuse that didn't make it sound as though L was suffering from severe memory loss.

"I don't know," he said as a default. "I… I think they're in the bedroom. Yeah, they're in the bedroom."

"Why aren't they on our wrists?"

Light shrugged, desperately trying to form sentences from the syllables that were still tripping over the revelation.

"I… I don't know, L—Ryuzaki. You're… you're the one with the key…"

L kneaded his forehead, as though trying to pinch the answers out manually.

"This is worrying, Light-kun. Perhaps we are both severely overworked. I don't recall taking the handcuffs off, but I must have, since I am, as you said, the only one with the key to them…" He glanced suspiciously at Light. "Well, let's go and put them back on and call Watari…"

L attempted to take a step forwards – and immediately stumbled as something in the dip of the knee joint gave out, while the rest of his leg muscles trembled piteously, able to take about as much pressure as tissue paper. L collapsed partway to the floor, only saved by grabbing the table and anchoring himself while his legs realigned themselves beneath him.

Light swooped down on this opportunity, helping L up and pushing him into one of the chairs at the table.

"You're too weak to walk all the way to the bedroom," he said breathlessly. "I'll go and get the handcuffs and your phone, okay?"

"No, I'm not supposed to let you out of my sight, that's the whole _point_ of the handcuffs…" L tried to get up again; and again his legs turned rubbery on him, insulating and nullifying the electrical signals his brain was desperately flashing to the non-responsive limbs. Light pushed him back into the chair again.

"I know," he said agreeably, playing the part despite his own hesitations, "but you can't even take one step. You just stay there. I'll be back in a second."

Light swept away out of the kitchen, leaving L to struggle to try and get into his preferred crouching position; breaking into a cold sweat sprint as soon as he was out of earshot of the room. His thoughts were erratic as he flew down the hall, darting towards the investigation room, where he'd left both Death Notes sitting conspicuously on the coffee table. But over all the mental pell-mell one question drummed repeatedly:

Was L alive?

The strange and terrifying idea encompassed vast oceans of possibility; he could get lost in the potential expanse. So many things to say to him, a veritable mountain of interesting debates that only had to be mined out with carefully crafted words. Questions, arguments, soul-baring conversations… Worth their weight in gold for someone trapped by his own superiority. To feel the simultaneous resistance and acceptance putting an infuriating but delicious strain on their relationship. And all the things to _do_ to the man, touch that cool, but warm, _so warm_, skin; breathe in every muscle and ripple and motion that reeked with the musk of being _alive_. Even the idea of being regarded with something more than soul-chilling hatred, _anything_ other than that broken mirror, was enough to make Light dizzy… The elliptical trail never ended.

And yet, that was the most dangerous thing about it…

There was only one way to find out.

He flipped through his own Death Note to the page of instructions he'd written surrounding Misa's suicide. L's true name was on this page, but it had been written whilst L was "dead", so Light supposed that it probably wouldn't have taken effect after L's "resurrection".

No matter. He flipped to a clean page and went over to the disused desks, pushing aside a few cobwebbed chairs to get into one of the drawers. He found two highlighters, a stapler, three pens and a spider that fled for her life when he winched the drawer open; he took up one of the pens and flicked the cap off, pressing the tip against the paper of the notebook.

He wrote _L _and then stopped.

He couldn't bring himself to write the rest.

L was dangerous; a threat to his cause; _more_ than a threat, he was a nuclear bomb with a speeding timer. He couldn't afford to have him here, especially not a version that had suddenly reverted back to thinking that they should be still attached by handcuffs. Light had come back here, faked his own death, so that he could defeat Mello and Near once and for all…

This was no place for L at this critical juncture. A dispassionate, "undead" one was bad enough – but Light couldn't be entertaining one who…

The real L. The alive one who had been both his friend and his lover, but also equally eager to have him put to death as Kira.

That, and there were certain things that Light couldn't hide from him. The absence of the taskforce members. The absence of Misa. The absence of _Watari_, for heaven's sake…

L's death had pulled Light apart from the inside the first time. And now that he was back, just in the next room… even though he knew he couldn't let him live, Light hesitated in writing down the rest of his name. The logic all pointed towards his death, there was absolutely no reason to keep him alive when the Kira evidence was snowballing and a motivated L could easily set it rolling. But it wasn't logic that stayed his hand…

"He's alive," Ryuk said from behind him, sauntering in through the wall. "I can see his name and lifespan, if you want to know. Writing down his name will kill him."

"…I know."

Ryuk snorted with jackal laughter.

"Having second thoughts, Light?"

"No." Light gripped the pen tightly as ideas flashed through his mind with the boundless potential of a second chance, only to be coldly sealed away as he wrote _Lawliet_ in firm strokes. "No, I'm not. There. It's done." He snapped the notebook shut with leaden resolve, checking his watch. "Thirty-six seconds to go."

Ryuk was still grinning gleefully.

"That took you by surprise, didn't it?"

Light looked up at the Shinigami sharply.

"…You _knew_?" He asked hoarsely as his forced confidence shrunk to the size of pencil lead."You knew that would happen…?"

"Well, I didn't know you were just going to shove the thing into his hand—"

"_Ryuk_!"

Ryuk waved his gangly arms dismissively.

"I didn't _know_ it would happen; it's just that now I've seen it happen, I'm not surprised."

"What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Well, I've heard about stuff like this happening with humans before. Just stories, you know? I told you, the Shinigami Realm is just a wasteland. All we do is sit around killing a human or two and playing games and talking. Stuff like this comes up sometimes, just legends or stories. There's not necessarily any truth in it. Like that thing where you can kill a Shinigami by making them alter the lifespan of a human that they love? I'd heard that before somewhere. I didn't know it was actually true until Rem died." Ryuk sniggered. "I remember one of the other Shinigami telling me a story like this before, too."

"A story like _what_?" Light asked frustratedly.

Ryuk opened his mouth; but paused when there was a sudden dull _thud_ from the next room, and Light passed him without a word, heading for the kitchen.

"Hey, don't ignore me," Ryuk pouted, floating after him. "I was about to answer your question."

Light didn't answer, pausing in the doorway. L was sprawled face-down on the kitchen floor, completely still.

"…He's dead," Light whispered as Ryuk joined him.

Ryuk shrugged, unaffected by the soft emotion-laden whisper.

"He'll get up again, don't worry. Be back to the way he was before he shoved that heart into himself. Can't say he'll be too happy with you, though."

"What was your story, Ryuk?" Light pressed as he approached L, crouching down next to him. "What… what _is_ this? What happened to him…?"

"Well, I can't be sure of how much truth is in it – Shinigami have a habit of making stuff up to replace details they can't remember – but it was something like… There was a human who got hold of a Death Note, and he had a girlfriend or a wife or something who knew about it, and someone else wanted the Death Note, so they kidnapped his wife or whatever the heck she was to use as a hostage to get the notebook, only… this human didn't want to give up the Death Note to the other guy, and he was afraid of his wife talking about it, so he wrote down her name and killed her. She was so angry that he'd chosen the notebook over her that she couldn't rest properly and came back from her grave. Uh…" Ryuk paused, scratching his hair in thought. "…I think it was something like… she said she'd lost her heart to him and he hadn't given her his in return because he'd killed her, so he killed someone and tore out their heart to present to her to try and make her happy, and when he gave it to her she plunged it into her own chest and came back to life just like that, and, um… I'm probably not telling it right, I wasn't really listening… It was Gelus who told me, he was into all that romantic crap… Oh, yeah…! That was it, when she came back to life he obviously didn't kill her like you just did, but after twenty-three days the heart inside her stopped working and kind of… burst or exploded or something… But it was okay, he went and got her another one and she came back to life again for another twenty-three days…"

Light glanced down at L, who was still lying completely motionless.

"Does it work with all Death Note victims?"

"No, only ones that have come back from the grave and if you loved them and if you betrayed them because you killed them or something." Ryuk gave an uninterested shrug. "I didn't even know there was any truth to it until just now. Gelus always used to come out with stupid sentimental rubbish like that."

"So… you give them a heart because… they don't have one anymore?"

Ryuk nodded.

"Seems like it. I mean, I guess it makes sense, the whole sentimental thing aside where you give them a heart to replace the one you stole from them. If a Death Note victim simply dies from a heart attack, then the only thing wrong with their body is that their heart doesn't work anymore. Replace it, and all your human science aside, there's no reason why they shouldn't be restored to life." Ryuk tilted his head. "To be honest, though, I wouldn't have thought there was any truth to it at all if I hadn't just seen it for myself. There are loads of stupid rumors surrounding the notebooks in the Shinigami Realm, most of them made up due to boredom or whatever."

"Give them a heart, and it lasts for twenty-three days unless you otherwise end their life," Light translated, more to himself. "But then… what about L's memory? He was acting the way he did… well, _way_ before I killed him. It's like he thought we were still trying to catch Higuchi."

Ryuk shook his head.

"Can't answer that one."

Light looked up at him.

"So… I can bring him back to life anytime I want…? All I have to do is put a heart into his hand and he'll do the rest by himself?"

"Seems like it."

Light smiled; and, on the floor, L began to stir.

"Hey, he's waking up," Light murmured, watching L put his hands on the floor and push himself up like a half-trampled spider.

"Yeah, I'd get away from him, if I were you," Ryuk said nonchalantly.

Light blinked, turning his attention away from L to look at the Shinigami.

"What… do you mean?"

Ryuk said nothing; he didn't have time to. L answered the question himself by slamming his sole into Light's side, instantly bruising the sparse flesh caught between foot and ribs. Light was knocked to the floor hard, and L followed through with the momentum of his kick by bringing his fist around and burying it in the boy's stomach. This wasn't just a retaliation, it was a full out attack, and L's blows were like ice bricks, causing real damage. Light was still choking on the air that had been knocked out of him when L was suddenly on top of him, a hand over his face. He clamped his fingers down and Light gurgled with pain as the digits buried themselves up to the first knuckle in his flesh with enough pressure to make his jaw creak. L's free hand whipped at Light's throat, and grabbed his windpipe like he intended to rip it out; the force formed a neat dent, instantly pinching off precious oxygen.

"_How dare you…_" he seethed, choking the life out of the struggling boy as the pain threw colorful dots through his eyes.

Light's single visible eye widened in terror as his chest trampolined, trying desperately to draw in air that just wasn't coming. He struggled, pushing ineffectually with suddenly weak arms, jerking his legs trying to get a foothold to buck L off; but the man just leaned down, putting more weight on Light's crushed throat. The dots were now trailing white tips across his blurry vision, and his lungs burned with a needy fire. A few more seconds passed, feeling like an eternity strung out between each; hazy music began to swell after the swirling colors, an old waltz wavering in and out like it was being played on an ancient warped record. Once the chatoyant colors and noise began to chase each other in kaleidoscopic ripples through Light's darkening mind, he knew that he had taken his last breath.

It was just as everyone had always said it would be. His life flashed before his eyes, but instead of flipping through a biographical picture book, it only consisted of one image… It was L, on top of him leaning down very much the way he was now; but instead of choking him with hatred so fresh and crisp that it could cut, he was shadowy and soft, bending over him in perfect love, in the most intimate sexual gesture imaginable. The single snapshot made him swell with sadness, but not because he was dying, since he had already experienced that slowly darkening sensation; it was because he was going to be killed by the hands of his friend.

In the moment that it took to surrender to the overwhelming melancholy of that truth, he felt the cords in his neck relax as well. There was then a fraction of a second in which L's clamping fingers left room enough to gasp, to take another breath. But it was a living breath this time, not a dying one. The vision, the colors, and the music dissipated like smoke as Light cocked his fist and socked L across the jaw.

It was enough to knock the dead man off and Light wasted no time in gulping down breath, after coughing breath of beautiful, delicious, sustaining air. L had slumped onto the floor from that one blow; even though it hadn't hurt him, it was enough to snuff the fire that had been burning in his veins. He spoke from his crumpled position on the floor.

"How… I-I didn't think even… even _you_… could—"

Light was still spluttering, holding the end of his ribcage, and hovering his other hand over his aching throat.

"I… didn't _know…_" he gasped, sitting up and moaning from the pain, the confusion, the tumultuous conflicting emotions. "I didn't know… it would bring you… back to life…!"

L took a shuddering breath, saying nothing more; and then appeared to compose himself again, cracks slipping back into place so as to be invisible to the naked eye. He got up, muscles appearing to work correctly again, and walked out of the kitchen without another word, slamming the door.

"Told you," Ryuk said delightedly, floating behind Light as he pulled himself up against the table; thoroughly stunned by the morning's events, to say the least.

"I don't understand," Light murmured, more to himself. "If there's a way for him to truly become alive again… why isn't he happy? He hates the way things are, he _hates_ being a corpse, he said so…"

Ryuk grinned.

"Well, maybe it's something you should stay away from—"

"No." Light clenched his fists. "Ryuk… I know you don't care about me. You only hang around because I make things fun for you."

"Right," Ryuk agreed, without any kind of pretense whatsoever.

"…So I know you don't care if I'm happy or not. But if you must know, I _hate_ him being here the way he is. The way he looks at me, the way he taunts me… he _loathes_ me, Ryuk. He says he understands why I killed him even if he doesn't like it, but… it doesn't _matter_ if he understands. The point is that he hates me for it, he hates me for being the reason he's been pulled out of Heaven and crammed back into that body… He doesn't believe that I'm sorry for it, but I am. It was enough that I killed him. I don't like being the cause of his pain. If there'd been another way I wouldn't have killed him at all, but there _wasn't_… It was him or me. One of us was going to die, and Rem… she wouldn't have ever allowed Misa to die if she could help it, so it was L."

Ryuk shrugged.

"So?"

"Well, didn't you _see_?" Light burst out. "When he had that heart in him… Ryuk, he couldn't _remember_ anything about being dead. He wasn't in pain, he didn't look at me as though he hated me… It was as though everything had just been wiped away—"

"It hasn't been, though," Ryuk interrupted. "You have to remember that. There's no way of reversing anything written into the Death Note. You're just giving him someone else's heart, and maybe it's just the gesture of it alone that brings him back to life, I don't know… But it doesn't _reverse_ anything."

"I know that, but…" Light gave a sigh, wincing as the hasty breath pulled a sharp shard of pain from his chest. "L and I have different ideals. That's why we clashed in the first place. And I may not agree with what he believes is right and wrong, but I know… that he has every right to hate me." He looked up at Ryuk, almost in desperation. "I don't _want_ him to hate me, Ryuk – and I don't think that _he_ wants to hate me, either. He wants to love me, but he can't. I've made it impossible for him, I've utterly destroyed him…"

Light took a slower breath.

"So… I want you to bring me another heart," he said firmly. "I can't stand him being in pain anymore."

Ryuk sulked visibly.

"What am I, your slave?"

"I'll get you apples," Light said dismissively. "Lots of them."

"Sold." Ryuk danced around the kitchen table, muttering "apples" over and over again in a ring-around-the-rosy sing song voice, looking utterly ridiculous.

"Wait, Ryuk."

Ryuk screeched to a halt, glancing at Light.

"What _now_?"

"I… don't just bring me _any_ heart," Light replied after a moment's hesitation. "…I want you to bring me… _Matsuda's heart_."

Ryuk blinked; then shrugged, his wings fluttering out from the dark depths of his back.

"Sure," he said, going over to the window. "Whatever."

"You know which one Matsuda is, right?"

"Yeah, the dumb, loudmouth one…" Ryuk sank through the window, emerging on the other side of it and soaring off like a monstrous overgrown raven.

Light went to the window, watching him flap away over the city, unseen to a world untainted by the Death Note.

It was important that he be specific; careful in choosing the hearts he would give as gifts to L, whom Light had called 'heartless' so many times without realizing the truth in his words.

It was perfect to give to L – the man he loved – the hearts of those with whom he'd tried to replace him.

* * *

It was like an unfinished fairytale.

Light finished writing and put down his pen, looking over the words forever now on white.

Yes, a fairytale; one that he'd thought was over, that had finished up with an 'unhappily ever after' a long time ago. An odd, sad little story about two who fell in love despite the incredible sloping odds against them; who learned to love one another despite the aura of death hanging immovably and implacably above their heads.

One doomed by the curse of the power to kill – the other doomed to die by his hand.

It had seemed as though it was simply a fairytale gone wrong, one written in the wrong way by the wrong author; the odds were often against the heroes and heroines of fairytales, such as a princess cursed to fall into ageless sleep at the touch of her finger to a spinning wheel's spindle, or another so despised for her beauty that her own stepmother tricked her into biting into an apple laced with poison.

But no matter those stacked odds, true love and goodness always prevailed in the end, and they got their happily ever afters, because that was the formula by which the alchemy of _fairietayles_ ran.

Only this one hadn't quite worked out like that; and what did you _do_ if true love's kiss failed to awaken the princess from her sleeping death…?

_Take up your pen and keep writing it._

And so now there was an odder, sadder little story about a man who had died,murdered by the man who had loved him; pulled from Heaven, faced with a world that had changed _because_ of his death—

And now a new fairytale twist – a dead man trapped in the world of the living, offered hearts by his murderer to replace the one taken from him, as though bewitched to be bound by such a contract.

_You have no heart__, my dark-eyed beauty; if you want one, you will have to take someone else's._

L's death hadn't been the end of the story; it had been only the beginning, the beginning of a tale that Light was writing himself.

A tale of stolen hearts and broken justice and happily ever afters.

—

"There are apples in the kitchen," Light said shortly when Ryuk came sauntering into the thoroughly-cleaned office, where the young man was sitting on the couch with his Death Note and pen out in front of him.

Ryuk nodded, holding out the small square box.

"Am I gonna have to keep getting these for you?" He whined. "Because I have to tell you, it's not easy. If you're wondering why it took me so long to come back, it's because I had to wait around at the morgue for three hours for all those stupid police officers to go away. They were looking over the bodies of all the people "Misa" killed. I thought it would have looked strange if that Matsuda guy's heart had suddenly just phased itself out of his chest and floated away…"

"No, you did good, Ryuk. You were gone longer than three hours, though. You've been gone all day." Light pointed at the window, where it was dark outside, as he took the box. "I've cleaned all the rooms I need, so you can stop bitching about how filthy everything is…"

Ryuk floated away through the wall, seemingly going to confirm this; he returned a few minutes later, munching an apple.

"Impressive," he said. "You're so good at everything, aren't you, Light? Even housework, apparently."

"Hey, you have to ration those," Light snapped, watching the Shinigami wolf the apple down with relish. "I have to be careful about going out now, so don't eat them all at once, because I might not be able to get you anymore for a while."

Ryuk gave a toothy pout, then tilted his head.

"Nice job on the bedroom, by the way. Very cozy."

"Yeah, well, that's one place you'd better stay the _hell_ out of," Light spat in reply.

Ryuk was silent for a long moment; then burst into peals of harsh, grating laughter.

"You humans… and your "needs"," he gasped. "Though I admit… the irony is—"

"Shut up!" Light snapped angrily, getting up and snapping his Death Note shut. "You're not even human, why the hell would _you_ understand…?"

He grabbed up the box holding Matsuda's heart and stalked out of the room, very annoyed with Ryuk despite his help. Well, why _should_ he be exceedingly grateful? He'd paid for Ryuk's services in the only thing that meant anything to the greedy bastard – apples.

"I didn't expect _you_ to be so needy, is all!" Ryuk called after him, cackling delightedly.

Ryuk was right, though. Light _was_ needy; all humans were. It was in their nature to place value in the company of others of their species; the way they were to value love above everything else.

After all, it was the mechanism on which _fairietayles_ ran; true love's kiss conquered even death because true love conquered all.

* * *

He found L on the roof.

It was only the fourth place he'd looked, and he was lucky enough to stumble silently upon him, leaning on the railing running around the edge of the roof and looking out over Tokyo the way he seemed to like doing.

Or maybe he _didn't_ like it. Tokyo was a vibrant, glittering city utterly teeming with life. Maybe L looked down upon it like a jealous, wrathful god, wishing to smite those far below him simply out of envy and spite.

L had been avoiding him all day, which Light couldn't say he was surprised by; but now he did nothing to attract his attention, slipping silently behind him like a shadow that his name denied. L paid him no heed, apparently not even noticing his scheming presence—

Until Light grabbed hold of his wrist and twisted it up high behind his back, pressing the heart into his hand. L gave a choking gasp and his head snapped back, as though he'd wanted to say something but had lost the means to.

Light let him go, stepping backwards away from him as L, still with his back to him, went through the same odd clockwork motions as before; taking the heart clutched in his hand up to where his own should be _and_—

He staggered backwards this time when he screamed; Light caught him, feeling him drag on him as his legs gave out. He sank to the surface of the roof with him, as he writhed and moaned silently. Light managed to turn him around so that they were face to face on their knees, before L fainted, eyes sliding closed and body rocking forwards against Light, his head resting against the younger man's shoulder. It seemed much less dramatic the second time, now that Light knew the mechanisms for what was going on; he observed the horrendous pain of L's revival with the same detached interest of a scientist.

It was a clear night, with a chill, fresh wind and a bright, thin slice of chalky moon. The ghostly glow of it danced along the chain of the handcuffs as Light snapped them between his and L's wrists.

If the tale was his to write, then it must be perfect down to the last detail.

L was warm again, with the flutter of Matsuda's heart strong against Light's palm when he pressed it to his thin chest. He held him close, waiting for him to wake up as the L he'd loved again…

He wasn't caught off-guard this time; he was ready, ready to play up the pretense, ready to make L believe that things were exactly as they had been before the realization that Light was Kira had brought everything crashing down on them both…

Those mirror-mirror eyes might reflect Kira, but if only they'd look upon him with something other than jeweled hatred masking despair, he was ready to do anything.

L stirred in his arms, lifting his head with a small shake.

"…Why… are we out here?" He asked in bewilderment.

"Just to get some fresh air," Light said softly. "You passed out. I think you're ill, or at least tired. Let's go back inside."

L gave a small, confused nod and started to get up; Light grasped hold of him, knotting his fingers in the black-as-ebony hair so that he could see himself reflected twice over in the tiny mirrors in L's eyes.

Even when L blinked and distorted the image a little, he couldn't help but smile.

"Light-kun, are you crying…?"

"What?" Light blinked; feeling a little wet saltiness sting his eyes as he disturbed tears that had been ripening up but had not fallen. "Am I?"

"I don't know. A little." L wiped his eyes for him on the white sleeve of his cotton top. "Maybe it's just the wind. It's cold out here."

"…Ryuzaki." Light slid his hands down from his hair, wrapping his arms tightly around his slender form again, pressing close to him savoring the contact and the warmth it provided. Proof of his heart that had somehow overcome the impossible damage and was now pumping heat through his body and love through his soul.

"Yes, Light-kun?"

"Ryuzaki." Light said it again; because he'd never realized how wonderful calling him by that fake name felt. The fact that he was _allowed_ to call him by it, that he would answer to it…

"What?" L pressed, sounding rather wary now.

"I…" Light leaned in close to his ear. "…I love you."

L was silent for a long, painful moment.

"I know," he said eventually, putting a hand to the back of Light's head and petting his hair absent-mindedly. "…I believe you."

L, despite his acute observations and keen intelligence, he still didn't understand why Light began to tremble and shake with fresh tears when he gave that reply, because it wasn't his place to understand it, and it wasn't his story to write.

* * *

**Narroch: **Ha HA! Now how many peeps thought that L was gonna be an icypop for the rest of the story? Ka ka ka, naw we wouldn't do that to you guys, I mean where is the fun in that?

**RobinRocks: **Of course, just like both the Death Note and the Shinigami Eyes, this little "quirk" comes with a price…

**Narroch: **I disclaim any responsibility for that obvious deux ex machina explanation. Honestly, there was nowhere else to cram it…

**RobinRocks: **…And by shirking her responsibility of it, she means it's _my_ fault.

It's true. It is. It's my doing, I wrote the explanation, because the heart thing was my idea. So _nyah_.

Well, we hope you like it. Poor little Light, what a dilemma. If only it were that simple… It's just an additional fairytale-like twist that seemed kinda cool to me. Zombie!L is fun, but not all the time…

And dear me… The bedroom, as Ryuk said, is "cozy", Light and L are chained together again, and L doesn't remember that Light is an evil bastard who killed him…

Review and we'll see what we can do about LxLight-ness next chapter.

ZOMG!!1111!! We're nearly at 1000 reviews! QUADRUPLE DIGITS. I've never ever ever ever ever _ever_ had a fic with a quadruple-digit review count before… Come on, kids! Aim for four digits and there will be LxLight-ness in it for yallz!

**Narroch: **You guys are amazing, we love each and every one of you!!

TTYS!

RobinRocks and Narroch xXx

P.S: Our forum is open, as always, for questions; and additionally, if you didn't know, Ohba and Obata wrote a post-series one-shot about Near, which appeared recently in Japan's _Shonen Jump_. It's very cool, and if you would like to read it, there is a link to a scanlated version on my profile. Share the wealth! Rawr!


	23. Alchemy

Wow. O.o

Well, what to say? We asked you guys to help us hit the four-digit mark last chapter and the response you gave was absolutely _overwhelming_! We do, at this present moment, stand at **1096** reviews – the amount of reviews we received for _Heart Sick_ alone was a staggering **97**.

Everyone, thankyou so so so so soooooooooooo much! :) We're so glad you all liked _Heart Sick_ and the brand new twist it has spun on _Poison Apple_. Hopefully you will all like this chapter just as much!

Thankyou to (boy, this is gonna be looooooooong): **Alice Melan, Lostpharoah, Mask of Mirage, Satora-chan, Nyx-Zephyrus, LawliPop, fouloldron, Candy Apple Heart Attack, Lawliet's Angel, Sinful Ang3l, Straddle, WhiteWolfCub, DoYouFindmeDreadful, Zuzeca, tsuki aoi usagi, Lady of the Void, Hitokiri Musei, Moonya, TheAutumnEffect, Jenna, Ayachan, Scripta Lexicona, Strange and Intoxicating-rsa, Pinink, MiaoShou, AutumnDynasty, TwistedLilBarbie, CanIInterestYouInThisLifeOfMin, Hazel2Eyes, Olynara Sedai, LustandVengeance, BakayaroManiac, bunnyofdeath, Mayura-Hikari-090, Fool4Sasuke33, Ezabelle Cervantes, yellowrose87, Love Lawliet, Shima-ru, Celestial Secrets, Anja-chan, blackhearteddistruction, Skyhe, Hikari Daeron, PikeNecoMico, DustDollarsDread, KitsuneChibiko, CheeseFaerieXXL, Sekana Katayama, Yaro, Neko-chwan, arsg-66, SilverFox, Stargirl7, Lady Rosina, Twilight Dim, dreamsofpalmtrees, Cobaltblack, The Sacred Pandapuff, Narni4eva, Layalas, Pluto, Perdue, ElegantArrow64, SMALLwhitelies, EpicPhail, daxterandboxer, ProfessorKatze, No Shaking Throne, Kagome-chan LP, kyousuke21, Insane Author, Wicked, The Devils Concubine, tsuanyue, Vedevria, oneminutemovies, Qxxl, Kira-Kira, Liviania, Sam, NeoAddctee, Mayumi Nakashima, Kaiji, EvilSpork, Isamu-Michi, KitoriWitch613, Kaze Kimizu, heartXofXtheXstorm, Yukari Youkai, xBakura's lovex, TheQueenofMediocrity, Mr Eff, PurePinkEtiquette, metal-mako-dragon, Kai Mine, Legatos, DragonPearl77, Lady Psychic, Sumanai, Kako, Shad0wform, tomato pulp, Cween Almond, vegetaslover9 **and **PhoenixofHell**!

…_Whew!_ Really hope I didn't miss anyone out… I don't have the time to respond to every single review personally, as much as I would like to, but honestly, guys – _every single review_ is appreciated! And I am happy to announce that there was not one detrimental comment about the events of _Heart Sick_. Yay!

And now, because Light is a twenty-one year old male and has urges…

* * *

_Be still, my love; you're home…  
Oh, when did you become so cold?  
The blade will keep on descending—  
All you need is to feel my love… _

- _The Poet and Pendulum_; Nightwish

* * *

Alchemy 

Light still knew how to win hearts, how to steal hearts, and how to break hearts.

_My world has contracted to fit in your arms—_

Perhaps that's what all human relationships boiled down to. Would you save my life? Or would you take it? Light Yagami was exceptional; to both questions he could answer yes.

—

Nature thrives in pairs. We have two hands, two feet, two eyes, two lungs, and two kidneys; this is no accident, since even the simplest vertebrae exhibit bilateral symmetry – the appearance of the same thing on one side as the other. Human symmetry, through more than skin deep, is not total. We have but one heart, and it is not only asymmetrical, but located to the left of center. In the diploid makeup of human bodies, hearts are an exception. Once the heart (the hardest working organ in the body) is worn out, there is no spare to take over. Once the heart stops, it is over.

In the face of its irreplaceable nature, the heart is an incredibly valuable bit of flesh. It, by itself, has the paramount task of distributing oxygenated blood to every part of the body, beating 100,000 times a day, 35 million times a year, and 2.5 billion times in a lifetime.

Give or take.

Viewed at its most basic function, as a pump, it is difficult to see why it is the most symbolically charged organ in the body. Why poets and lyricists and people from all cultures and times would place so much emotional and spiritual emphasis on a muscle that simply moves blood around. Hearts do not weep, hearts do not fly, or sing, or leap, or love. They simply do their task until they no longer can.

And yet, despite the logic behind the mechanism, despite the straightforward industrious nature of the heart, there really was no other way to look at the situation. There were pieces missing that a simple pump could not account for; a heart by itself could not restore memories, or emotion, or even _love. _But this one _had_. Somehow, it had been _exactly_ what it felt like – a dream where the rules of reality are optional, and the fairytale glitches became truth. The poet had been right all along—

Though perhaps it had nothing to do with the heart at all. Maybe it was only effective due to the fact that humans are only bestowed with _one_ heart; and in order to give life, another must give it up.

_(And he understood now; when he'd given L that apple and L had taken it, pressed it against the place where he should have __had a heart and asked if it was a replacement, a sacrifice for a sacrifice—)_

Perhaps it was only the sacrifice involved that lifted the cold funeral shroud from L's shoulders; since, just like everything else concerning the Death Note, there was always a price to pay.

* * *

Like a black fairy, Ryuk flitted behind Light, snickering wildly at the sight of the young man carrying L down from the roof.

"Carrying your lover to the bedroom, eh?" the Shinigami observed with a sharkish grin. "You humans are a weird bunch – killing each other one minute and kissing each other the next. We Shinigami are all just neutral towards one another. It's better that way."

Light refrained from snapping back at Ryuk to shut up and mind his own business due to the fact that the L fidgeting in his arms was one now oblivious to the Shinigami's presence. He himself was baffled by the fact that L didn't seem to be able to walk once restored to life – he could get up, keep his balance, but the moment he tried to take a step his legs liquefied into noncompliant jelly and he crumpled. He wasn't easy to carry because he was bony and squirmed about a lot and protested that he didn't need Light to carry him, he could walk by himself, which obviously wasn't true given that Light had only picked him up after his eighth attempt to walk by himself. It would have been a sad loss of dignity, if it had been anyone else besides L. As it was, Light could only conclude, somewhat spitefully, that the sudden handicap was due to karma from all the years he had spent sitting abnormally. Not to mention it brought a twitch of a smile to Light's face as he watched him struggle so piteously; after so many weeks spent languishing in L's unaffected shadow, the determined lengths he went to now to overcome his own weakness were endearingly human.

Though he knew that Ryuk could phase through things, Light slammed the bedroom door behind him, hoping that the force of it alone informed the nosy bastard that he wasn't welcome to follow them. Ryuk obviously took the hint, since he didn't come sliding through the wall after them, even though Light could still hear his cackles bouncing around in the hallway as he floated away.

"Are you angry about something, Light-kun?" L asked as Light took him over to the bed and put him down. On edge as it was, the loud noise had made him jump in Light's arms. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine." Light gave a little sigh, and then a smile. "How about you? It's… _odd_ that you can't…"

"Walk? Yes, I agree." L frowned down at his bare feet, flexing his toes. "It's very strange indeed. I don't feel weak, but I can't seem to take a single step for myself…" He slid his feet flat onto the floor and pushed up from the bed, able to stand – but, again, the moment he stepped forward his legs buckled into a nerveless heap. He caught the dresser to save himself, one knee hitting the carpet.

Light immediately started for him to help him up, but L waved him away frantically, the chain that Light had threaded back between their wrists jingling.

"Don't help me," L said firmly, dragging on the dresser for leverage to get himself up again. "I don't understand… why I can't—"

Light caught him this time as he lost his balance again, catching him under his arms as L's head safely landed against Light's chest.

"I feel like a child," L muttered scornfully into Light's shirt, held up like a limp puppet.

"But you aren't." Light said it softly, making L look up at him. "You aren't a child, Ryuzaki."

"Neither are you." L reached up, touching Light's lips with his fingertips, care akin to that exercised in reaching for the spindle that had been the death of him. "You are strangely mature for someone so young, Light-kun – in some ways, certainly, you act your age, but in serious matters, your wisdom is unnervingly beyond your years. Although…" He reached up, pressing his hands against either side of Light's face, intensely studying him with the lasers that he called eyes. "…For some reason, you seem to have aged a little."

The words were slurred with suspicion, and his face was narrowed in perplexed study; simultaneously analyzing and hiding the fact that he did not have an explanation for the sudden age jump.

_Of course._

It hadn't occurred to Light that L would notice that he was suddenly three years older than he'd been when originally chained to the detective. He'd taken his age for granted, and had been too caught up in other things to worry about a detail like that…

"Perhaps it is just me," L went on quietly, still staring at the face caught between his palms – but now it was a gentler, more appreciative, gaze, tracing his lines instead of trying to break them down. "You are without a doubt a very beautiful person, Light-kun, but perhaps my attraction to you enhances your looks even more."

Light gave a little laugh, and shook his head free.

"Maybe." He smiled. "You always call me beautiful, Ryuzaki."

"That's because you are, Light-kun. You need only to note your popularity with your female acquaintances or look in a mirror to ascertain that."

"Beauty isn't everything, Ryuzaki," Light said, glancing away from the mirrors he could indeed see in the detective's eyes.

"I know that. If anything, it is deceptive." L looked very hard at him, boring into him once again. "Skin-deep, as they say."

"Ryuzaki, don't do this."

Light pleaded more with his eyes than with his voice – he couldn't stand to hear L accuse him of being Kira now, not when he _knew_ that he was and knew that the only reason L was standing before him like this was because he'd been killed by Light in his role as Kira and was now restored as a heartless animated corpse, able to be rewired into this original version only by the aid of a heart torn from the chest of somebody else. The circle the accusation ran through was too tightly looped, a corset of emotion painfully bound around Light's chest; that constricted every time Kira was mentioned.

L returned Light's pleading, beseeching stare with incredulous disdain.

"Don't accuse you of being Kira – the very reason you're chained to my wrist for?"

"_Don't_," Light begged; because it hurt _so much_ to hear L talk like this, oblivious of the fact that Light had killed him, still hanging on a not-quite-there certainty that he was Kira. It was pain that he'd brought on himself, he knew that – but that didn't make it hurt any less.

Like rereading a fairytale after you've long grown up and realized that the world just doesn't work like that.

"Ryuzaki," Light sighed finally, holding up the wrist around which that old handcuff was encircled once again, "I know we're probably never going to have a happily ever after. It's something we've both said because we both know it's true. Despite everything that's brought us together, I don't think we're meant to _be_ together – there is too much against us. But for god's sake… for just _one_ night, can't we just pretend that you don't think I'm going to strangle you the second you turn your back on me?"

L tilted his head, and the carefully-constructed words seemed to slide off him, right to the floor.

"Do you really think," he said slowly, "that being together and a 'happily ever after' are the same thing?"

"It doesn't matter!" Light said frustratedly. "I understand, okay – I understand that we'll probably never have either, whether they're the same thing or not. But I'm tired, I'm just… I'm so _tired _of fighting you."

"Give up your fight, then," L responded expressionlessly. "Confess."

"You see?" Light snapped in response. "_This_ is what I'm tired of!"

And though he was able to avoid answering the demand, Light suddenly realized with a hardboiled certainty, that in this state he really _could _confess. Remembering all the times L had attempted to pry the truth from him through pleasure, pain, intimidation and deprivation… Light now realized that the only thing that had stopped him from spilling his guts all those times before was the thin forgetful sheet hemming his memories away. His own mind had been deluded by their absence and he had never cracked simply because he had truly believed that there was nothing _to _crack.

If L were to employ some of those tactics now, Light wasn't sure he would be able to withstand the onslaught with the true answer that L wanted to hear dancing temptingly on the tip of his mind and tongue…

"Light-kun, you're a suspect," L said wearily. "I'm just doing my job. I'm sorry."

"I just want—"

"I know. I know what you want – but to be perfectly honest, Light-kun, I don't understand _why_ you want it." L frowned at him, chewing at his thumb. "Tonight you want us to pretend that I'm not L and you're not a Kira suspect – you want us to just pretend we're normal, living a little fairytale without a death sentence attached to it. You want us to pretend that we're _happy_. I agree, Light-kun – it's an enviable state of affairs, but it's one that isn't _ours_, and since you seem to have accepted that it never _will_ be, I admit I am confused as to why you would wish to pretend that it is. The truth hurts, but lies only hurt more, don't you think? Why do you want to pretend that we have something which, in all honesty, we will _never_ have? Surely it will only be worse when you've stopped pretending, because it will feel as though you were that much closer to having it, only for it to be snatched away again."

Light was silent, looking steadfastly at the carpet and struggling to get a reign on the disconcerting feelings that had surfaced and were now slinking around his eyes, blurring them with unshed tears. He was usually so unruffled and mechanical about everything, so why was this whole situation with L and his alive-dead-alive-dead routine making his emotions swell so uncontrollably?

_(…Perhaps because L was right about all this. Asking this memory-skewed, heart-enchanted L to pretend that they weren't picking up speed on the road to ruin was exactly the same as returning him to this memory-skewed, heart-enchanted L in the first place and trying to convince himself that the detective's death and everything that had ever followed it had been nothing but an __exaggerated prophetic nightmare—) _

"Light-kun?" L tilted his head, looking up at Light with his large mirror-mirror eyes. "You seem very upset tonight. Please don't cry. You know full well this is just the way things are between us. It's nothing personal."

"Sometimes… don't you wish things were different?" Light whispered, blinking rapidly and still not bearing to look at the detective.

"Of course, but truthfully, such a thing is simply not an option. If things were different – if you weren't a Kira suspect or if I wasn't a detective – we would probably never have met to begin with."

"But it's not _fair_!" Light burst out, unable to hold the waterworks back any longer, rather letting the tears overflow their banks and stream hot salty tracks messily down his face as silent sobs bucked mercilessly in his chest. "Why do some people get to be happy and other people don't?! What the fuck is _wrong_ with this world?!"

"Because that's how the world is." L wiped the tears on Light's face away with his sleeve – an action that only induced more of them. "I don't know why you're so worked up tonight, but I wish you would calm down. Your reasoning echoes Kira's and so you're convincing me of your guilt for a silly reason, and that aside, I don't like to see you cry."

Light gave a nod and wiped fiercely at his face himself, willing himself to stop crying so stupidly. He was ashamed by the tears, by his loss of control, by the fact that L still had useless percentages bouncing around in his head…

"That's better." L leaned forward and licked the last of his tears away with a gentle nuzzle. "You shouldn't get upset about things that you have no control over."

"…And what if… you _could_ control them…?" Light murmured, returning the gesture and leaning his head forward until they were cheek to cheek, resting on one another's shoulder and breathing in the other's ear.

"Then you'd have more power than even Kira." L said, gesturing a shrug through his voice rather than his occupied shoulders. "But, like Kira, I doubt it would make you any happier."

Light gave a weak little smile, his mouth curled up next to L's neck.

"And how do you know that Kira isn't happy?" He asked hoarsely.

"Because I fail to see how the power to kill could make _anyone_ happy."

"…What about the power to _give_ life?" Light pulled back and locked eyes with L. "The power to restore it, to breathe it back into the dead."

"You speak of alchemy."

"Is that what you would consider such a power?"

"Our modern science knows that, in the realm of mortal humanity, at any rate, such a thing is impossible. A complete – or as near to complete as is most likely possible – knowledge of the human body allows us to determine this fact. But it is notable that highly-respected scholars of past centuries, specifically those of European origin, pursued the secrets of such a science, believed to exist at that time. They were, as you know, called alchemists. In many ways, much of their work is both admirable and fascinating – they were most certainly dedicated men, if nothing else. However… the very basis of much of alchemy itself is very fatally flawed."

"Well, of course. The periodic table of elements wasn't invented until 1869, and even now it is still missing many entries. So much of alchemy comes from chemical research and theory that has now been proven incorrect by modern science—"

"No, Light-kun. While you are correct, that wasn't what I was implying."

"Then what…?"

"A lot of alchemy comes simply from human greed," L said softly. "Two of alchemy's primary goals; the creation of gold and the ability to cheat death. Riches and life as long as you wish it – the two things humans would choose above all others. Even _love_, I daresay."

"You… think that the ability to return the dead to life is… just _greed_?" Light reinstated faintly.

"It's not that simple," L responded. "There is human emotion to consider – fear of dying ourselves, grief and love for those who have gone. Whilst I would be confident in saying that extended or everlasting life is something that most humans would choose _over_ love, it undoubtedly goes full-circle. If you had the ability to give or extend life, you would no doubt use it to prevent or reverse the death of someone you loved. But when you take that love away, yes… all it comes down to is greed. Humans trying to control everything around them, even the inevitable. All of human nature, as I have said to you before, is undoubtedly governed by desire – and of course, humans will always seem to desire what is worst for them. It's how we are."

"I don't—"

"Agree?" L looked up at Light, unblinking. "Well, you don't have to – your opinion is as valid as mine. But to take _ourselves_ as an example… What are we doing? We desire this; this relationship that can be nothing but destructive. It's not going to have a happy ending, we both know that, and yet… we make no attempt to stop. Why? Because humans are self-destructive creatures. That's the only answer I can give, because it's the only one there _is_."

"…Wouldn't you say it's weakness rather than greed?" Light asked, his voice barely audible. "If you were to return to life… someone you loved?"

"I wouldn't call it weakness," L replied, "for the simple reason that it's human nature that would instill such behavior; and if it is merely nature then we can conclude that this is how all – or most, at least – humans would behave in these circumstances. Therefore, there is nothing to compare it to that would present it as weak. Nothing else on this earth possesses the kind of reasoning we pride ourselves on being able to apply. However…"

Light looked up again at L on hearing him pause, clinging to his every word.

"…It intrigues me, admittedly, that gold or life would be valued above love," L said, "when love is surely the most powerful thing in the world. It drives people to murder and steal, often changes them completely, renders them ready to lay down their life to protect the one at whom that love is directed. Even beyond death, love is what keeps the memory of that person alive. That's how all the fairytales go, after all, isn't it? Love's kiss will awaken the spellbound dead because it's more powerful than anything else. Humans might be stronger if they didn't feel love, but I think that it's safe to say that the world would be even worse than it is now, because sometimes… it's the only thing you have left. It's the only thing that makes life worth living."

Light gave a little laugh, brought back from the brink of tears by amusement.

"You're uncharacteristically sentimental sometimes," he noted.

L shot him a playful little smirk.

"Does it work?"

Light didn't even realize he was moving forward until suddenly the gap between them had dissipated and his vision held nothing but L's face. But it was too late to stop the action, since L chose at that moment to lean forward as well, and their lips were drawn together like rain to river, tiny pinpoints of emotion and desire gathering and pooling into something neither of them had the strength to fight against. They both fell beneath the current of the kiss, and though it had barely deepened Light couldn't help but tremble, slightly overwhelmed, but still delighting in the fact that it didn't feel like he was kissing lips of ice and venom. He savored the feeling for a moment more before pulling back to murmur his answer.

"Only when I choose to let it," he replied in a low voice, pressing his forehead against L's.

"You're heartless, Light-kun."

"No, I'm not." Light had maneuvered them towards the bed again by this point, pushing L down against it, the clean, crisp sheets folding beneath the shape his weight pressed into them. "_And neither are you_."

Light straddled him, leaning down to kiss him again – to taste every inch of him, taste his breath and the life that flavored it. L had propped himself up on his elbows so that he could lean upwards into it, this gesture alone making Light love him more than anything; pride was a stubborn thing, and maybe whilst L had truly been alive, Light would never have gone so far as to feel privileged and grateful that L was responding to him at all, but now, after spending so long being dissected by those cold, lifeless eyes, the mere fact that he wasn't being pushed away in disgust made him grasp L's shoulders and clutch them tightly.

They were warm.

Warm, just like the rest of him. His mouth, his breath, the rest of his slender body under that uniform of his, worn in both life and death.

White. He always wore white, a checkerboard or playing-card contrast against his hair black as ebony, or—

The expensive tailored shirt Light was wearing right now – the crisp black material that L was grabbing a fistful of and twisting as Light pushed him down flat against the mattress, drinking him in as though dying of a thirst only the man pinned beneath him could quench.

"We chose this," he panted against L's mouth on breaking from him for air. "No matter what happens – whether we get a happy ending or not – _we chose this_."

_(If the ride's gonna kill you, might as well enjoy it…)_

"Yes. We did." The answer sent a swell of desire through Light, filling him like a breath of hot air – though even when he exhaled the feeling did not leave him. L shifted up the mattress a little, towards the headboard, Light following him as though attracted to him like a magnet. "Man is known for choosing what will doom him."

"It doesn't matter." Light descended on L's throat and began to lace it with pulsing kisses and hot trailing licks, feeling the detective turn his head to the side to willingly expose his jugular.

"Doesn't it?" L murmured, Light's mouth tracing pleasurable circles on his neck rendering him unable to keep still.

"No, because… you said that love was the only thing that matters, and I…"

"I didn't say that. Of course it's not the only thing that matters. Justice and fairness and strong morals are just as important. I said that love was the most _powerful_ thing there is."

"Well, that… that must be true, because… right now, Ryuzaki, you're the only thing in the entire world that matters to me."

"That's just because you want sex, Light-kun," L replied dryly. "But… I suppose we're done with the denial for today. You _are_ right – it doesn't matter. Whether we're sinful for doing this, whether we're destroyed by it, love is love. It might not be a happy ending, but maybe that really doesn't matter – _this_ is the important part."

Light was beginning to think that giving L Matsuda's heart had given him parts of Matsuda's personality too – he was still L, but incidentally he couldn't recall L ever being quite this much of a romantic.

Still, he was right. L was only like this because Light had had Ryuk tear out Matsuda's heart so that he could give it to him – in his true state he was nothing more than a heartless animated puppet dragged back from his grave, and yet…

Light loved him. In any form, no matter his denial, Light loved L; and L loved him, even whilst haunting him with his mere presence.

That was why L was in so much pain – because his anger and resentment were still infused with a love that refused to die despite his own death at the hands of the one he loved in the first place. It was a dangerous and illogical combination, one that still smoldered, eating them both from the inside out. If only Light could diffuse it now with his actions and words that spoke of love instead of death and betrayal…

"I love you," Light murmured, nuzzling against L with demanding affection, nipping gently yet persistently at a cord in his neck, working his way down to the juncture where his shoulder started. "You don't have to say you believe me. I don't care if you do or not, because I love you anyway."

"I know you do."

Light smiled to himself.

"You never say you love me back, jerk."

"You're intelligent, Light-kun. I'm sure you don't need me to."

Light smiled, taking L's hand.

"Say it anyway." He carefully kissed each one of the older man's fingertips. "I want to hear it."

"I love you, Light-kun." L tilted his head, then leaned back with a pleased sigh as Light began to lick between his fingers, worrying the sensitive webbing at the base of each digit. "Does that make you happy?"

Light turned L's hand over, place a soft kiss in the center and then rested his cheek in the upturned palm so that L was now cupping his face. He gave him a sweet, half-sad little smile.

"Yes, Ryuzaki. It does." It came out as a sigh and he continued to nuzzle into the warm palm holding him.

L averted his gaze to the ceiling.

"Humans are such odd creatures," he mused.

"_You're_ human."

L gave a small sigh.

"Sometimes I wonder…"

Light, having already forgotten the circumstance of the true situation, let the comment fly by unhindered, and instead shot him a wicked smile.

"We could experiment to find out."

L returned his gaze to him, arching a single silky eyebrow.

"Could we indeed."

Light offered no response to that, rather sliding down L's body and firmly grasping the waistband of his jeans; he undid the button and zip in a single decisive motion, then shucked them and the shorts in another, amused by how the material caught slightly on the swelling obviously present.

L sat up, biting at his lip anxiously as though he wasn't sure what Light was up to when, in all fairness, it was surely pretty obvious. He made an anxious little sound as Light lowered his head, slowly breathing across his chest, moving down and rolling the white shirt up just enough to reveal his navel.

Light's tongue circled the shallow well before dipping tenderly in and out, as his hands got minds of their own and wandered up L's sides, unconsciously counting and caressing the ribs along the way. He looked up as his hands slipped further up beneath L's shirt and traced over hardened nipples, watching the delectable way in which his face heated up, lips cracking open for a low moan. He felt more than a little relief that L was finally reacting to his touch, and drank the pleasured expression in, letting the euphoria wash over his memories of an impenetrable and icy L.

Light kissed over his belly, nipping the sweet spot just below his navel, and then let his arms wander down from L's chest. They traveled back along his sides and beneath, cupping the small of his back and holding on tightly as L arched up into the breath that was teasing at the tip of his erection. Light ignored his needy arousal in order to sample the soft skin of L's inner thighs, smelling the musky perspiration, and feeling the corded muscle there jerk from the caress of his tongue. He continued to work around every inch of trampolining skin, purposefully avoiding the hard erect bit that needed it most.

L, it seemed, decided that the stimulation wasn't enough and after a gush of impatient disdain, lifted his hips to buck up and actually _poke _Light in the face with his neglected arousal. The brusque action left a small hot droplet of precome on Light's cheek, and he stared, taken aback, at L. He was not sure whether to be amused or irritated, and so decided on a mixture of both.

"Was that really necessary?"

"Forgive me Light-kun, but it is unlike you to be so deliberately dilatory," L replied, somewhat breathlessly.

"It's called foreplay…" But Light knew that L was right, it _wasn't _like him to tease so much. Before, when things were still within the realm of accepted reality and the dead stayed _dead_, they never spent much time drawing it out. First it had been about dominance, and then morphed into selfish turn-based pleasure seeking. There was love present as well, but usually by the time they got to bed, their zippers were already greased and ready for action. The softer, more tender, caresses usually came after the fucking was over, not before. It made Light realize how deprived he had become, how much those loving touches had meant to him and how much he missed them. He was trying to _savor _the interaction, but L was as horny as he ever was, and it simply seemed tedious to him.

Light simply grinned and decided that he had missed the fast-paced fucking just as much as anything else. Tightening his grip around L, practically hugging his lower half, he descended on him without any further ado, which proved that either animated corpses with the hearts of other humans in them _were_ actually human – Light's predicted conclusion – or they were simply as partial to a blowjob as real humans were.

A successful experiment, at any rate.

L lay back slowly, squirming restlessly on the sheets beneath Light's mouth – the conductor to the orchestra; he clutched at the pillow and tossed his head from side to side, groaning Light's name without the honorary in the way he always had, then descending to English as it became harder and harder for him to think straight—

"I can't understand you," Light said, lifting his head with a long lick in order to look up at him.

L opened his eyes, dizzy with delight.

"Would you prefer… I spoke in French…?" He asked brokenly, dutifully going back to Japanese. "It's the language… of love…"

"I don't know much French."

"It's a very… beautiful language." L mopped at his brow with his cuff. "Perhaps you'd… like German? Italian? A little Russian?"

"I know what I want to hear from you."

(Incidentally, Light had heard L brag about how many languages he could speak previously – first-language English, fluent German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch, Japanese and Russian, while being fairly competent but not quite as well-conversed at Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, Korean and Portuguese and knowing enough Polish, Finnish and Swedish so as to ensure that he wouldn't starve or be without a place to sleep in any of those respective countries.)

"For someone with such… a pretty mouth, Light-kun certainly… talks dirty," L observed breathlessly as Light released his hold and knelt up over him, unbuckling his belt. "Only in his own language, however."

"They don't teach you how to say English obscenities in school," Light replied flatly.

"I should… hope not." L's eyes gleamed playfully. "Though I could teach you."

"No thanks." Light leaned down again, capturing L's mouth for a deep kiss as he loosened his own fitted dress pants, letting them slide to his knees and kicking them off with his boxers. Still caught up in a tangle of silky lips and tongue, Light slowly ground his pelvis against L's, crushing their erections together between their heated bodies. L rewarded the motion by moaning into Light's mouth, stilling for a moment at the sensation. Light then reached down and held them together, stroking them both with his one hand until the two of them were panting.

"Close your eyes," he said on pulling back, their faces still only a few inches apart.

"You seem particularly… dominant tonight, Light-kun."

"Close them. I'm not going to do anything you won't like."

L hesitated for a moment, as though battling internally with his mistrust of the younger man – with good reason, it couldn't be denied. Light Yagami was exactly the kind of person who'd trick a Shinigami into killing you the second you turned your back on him…

But eventually he let them slide closed, at which Light straddled his stomach and placed a hand on his shoulder to ground himself. He reached back with his other hand to grasp L's erection and to guide it as he slowly sank down.

He gave a shuddering groan as it started to stretch him painfully and L gave a gasp that was halfway pleasure and halfway surprise, his black eyes snapping open again to see Light wincing and slowly pushing himself down on him.

"Light-kun… if this is hurting you… you don't have to—"

"No," Light interrupted determinedly, pushing down further as he felt L slide into him like a key into a lock. "It's okay, I just…" He paused, his head dipped; almost-but-not-quite there as he panted in discomfort. "…Gravity make this way… hurt a bit more…"

"Let's reverse gravity, then." L grasped Light's hips to hold him still while arching his own sharply upwards, finishing the union.

Light gave small strangled cry, arching his back like a bow, and L clutched at his hand, straining upwards towards him.

"Are you okay, Light-kun?" He whispered.

Light gave a nod, breathing heavily.

"Does it hurt?"

"It's not… too bad," he murmured.

"Can I… can I move?"

Light paused for a second, trying to adjust, and then finally gave a breathless nod.

L didn't, however, move for another long moment; taking it to sit up properly and wrap his arms around Light and lean up to kiss him.

He threaded his fingers in Light's auburn hair and closed his eyes and thus was blinded to the tears that came streaming once more from Light's own cinnamon orbs. He felt them, however, when he ran his fingertips down over Light's face, opening his own eyes and blinking once or twice.

"You're crying again," he said. "I am hurting you?"

He was overcome by the intense sensations, the stretching pain, the complete fullness, the zinging sparks of pleasure that made his cock twitch. After months of enforced celibacy, and constant hatred directed solely at him, the sudden overload of emotional and physical sensations was enormous. Like fruit put up in a jar and forgotten about, the sweetness seemed even more distilled as he returned to his old role. Light shook his head, seeing the reflection of himself in L's eyes mirror the motion, and smiling through his tears as more spilled over.

_Nowhere that you could do anything to stop the pain, anyway… _

"It's okay," he whispered. "You can move."

L gave a small nod, sliding his hands down Light's body onto his slender hips to pull him down onto him as he rocked his hips upwards. Light gave a shattered gasp, throwing his head back with painful force and grasping a handful of L's white top, pulling hard on it. The material strained further when L sank back to the mattress, propping himself up on one elbow as his hand slid down over Light's thigh away from his hip, finally landing on the sheets and gripping a handful of it to match Light's fingers stressing his top.

Maybe it was fitting that Light was still wearing his shirt too – black and crisp and clinging to his sweaty form with every movement. Black and white – Kira and L – playing cards and chessboards—

Ink and paper.

It was all Light could do to stop the tears from spilling once again – he'd lost count of how many times tonight alone he'd started to cry because of this, because of the success of this forbidden alchemy. Maybe it couldn't be helped – he was human, and, as L had said, humans were greedy and weak.

Having L back like this, if only for one night, was probably the worst thing in the world for Light Yagami – and yet, on having the knowledge and power to do it, there was no way in all of Heaven or Hell that he would never have forced life back into him.

Knowledge was power. Light knew that – after all, it was only the knowledge of the names of others that had enabled him to become Kira to begin with. Knowledge had always been a drug to humankind, hence the alchemists themselves and their ungodly pursuits to discover and master the formulas for things unattainable in the Realm of Normalcy.

To seek the ability to become God.

Light looked down at L through sweat-burnt eyes stung by salt once more; the detective was breathing hard, holding Light's hip and the bedsheets as he rocked his hips upwards to match with Light's downward thrusting motions, his usual deathly pale but for the faint nuance of color in his cheeks. His ebony fringe was plastered to his forehead, with the rest of his hair pulled this way and that in an awkward spray of ink; and his eyes were just barely open, the jet orbs glossy and metallic.

_He'd_ done this. He'd given him life. Twice he'd taken it and twice he'd given it back.

He could keep doing it. He knew the formula. He knew the components.

The chain was coiled on the sheets – a visible bond linking the living with the dead.

At the end of the day, it might simply be human greed that wished for wealth and immortality, but a life lived in comfort without the fear of dying were ultimately the two things that made humans _happiest_.

That was why they desired them.

Light was now riding L with selfless abandon, past the pain, past the doubts, led on purely by impulse. His whole body was a wick smoldering on the brink of ignition, head bowed, hair falling across his eyes as the motion inside him continued; it seemed as if it was impossible for him to stop now, even if he wanted to.

Suddenly he gasped as a pair of hands grabbed his neglected cock and began to pump in time with his frenzied bucking. It was almost more than he could handle and all it took was a single word to drive him over the edge.

"_Light…_"

Everything tightened and exploded in a searing arc that bent him backwards and nearly blinded him with pleasure. But even as the ecstasy faded into a post-orgasmic glow, and his eyes drooped with glazed-over fatigue, Light continued to move. Leaning forward and clenching, running fingers up across the taut trembling skin, smearing a nipple with his own semen, driving down and clenching one more time…

L jerked like a whip beneath him, twitching as he filled Light with heat. His eyes were wide and unseeing as the blissful spasms completely drained him.

Light gave a satisfied sigh, feeling more complete than he ever had since he had woken up in this alternate plane. L pushed at his leg, trying to get him to move off, but Light just tightened his legs and leaned down to kiss and lick at L's mouth. He wanted to stay like this as long as possible, stay connected with L by more than just a thread of steel links – even if it was just to delude himself.

—

Later, in the gold haze of the lamp left burning, Light leaned over L, feeling the sleeping detective's form hot and sticky beneath his own. The heart that wasn't his still beat dutifully within his ribcage, slow and rhythmic beneath Light's fingers.

Light held him tight and buried his face in his black-as-ebony hair as the tears that seemed to be a price to pay for this kind of black alchemy started again at the mere scent of _life_ staining L's skin.

"_Forgive me_," he wept, letting that weakness break him just for a moment. "_Please, please forgive me_."

* * *

Near had once made a very scathing remark about Mello and Matt's lovemaking, able to voice an opinion on the matter because he'd once walked in on them "battling it out" on the floor of Mello's bedroom. Near had been thirteen and Mello and Matt were, in all honestly, barely that much older than him, and so Mello and Matt were, by law, too young to be engaging in such an act and Near was too young to be walking in on it.

But, being Near, he'd made no movement, no gesture of surprise or horror, and had simply sauntered back out of the room, saying that Mello appeared to be busy and that he would come back later.

If he'd tattled to Roger, incidentally, Matt and Mello would have had their asses kicked to the middle of next Wednesday, given that this was at a point prior to Roger's feigned ignorance of what the pair of them had taken to doing because it was both embarrassing and pointless to address. Mello was a ridiculously stubborn child and even Matt had more of a rebellious temperament than people gave him credit for.

Near didn't say a word about it to Roger or Watari or L or any of the other kids or even Matt.

He'd only spoken of it once to Mello; over three months later, just bringing it up out of nowhere, really, whilst kneeling on the floor playing with little clockwork cars. The playroom had been deserted but for the pair of them given the hot summer afternoon, the type that collected heat and moisture in equal parts, making the still air indoors unbearably muggy; it was the type of afternoon that demanded breezy shaded porches, iced tea, and complete silence. Mello had only been inside because he was waiting for Matt, who'd been given a detention for playing on a Gameboy under his desk during class.

No surprises there.

"That time I walked in on you," Near had said, not even offering the blonde his full attention, "I thought you and Matt were fighting. I thought he was hurting you because you kept saying "Oh, God" and moaning his name."

Mello had looked up from his book murderously, as Near went on;

"I know what you were doing, but… it really _did_ look like you were fighting. It was so aggressive. You even had your hands around his neck—"

By the by, Roger had walked in a few moments later and found Mello with his hands around _Near's_ neck – though it had been no less passionate than Mello and Matt's embrace, it was certainly more homicidal, and it had probably been more of a hindrance than a help to Mello's cause that he had _confessed_ to attempting to kill the younger boy. After prying them apart, Near looking ruffled but not very vindictive, Roger had packed Mello off to his room for the rest of the day as punishment.

He'd gotten revenge, at any rate, by bitching about the escapade to Matt after the redhead had snuck into his room past eleven at night and resolving with him to slam the headboard against Near's wall as hard as they possibly could.

Whether he took the hint or not, Near never mentioned Mello and Matt's lovemaking ever again.

—

It wasn't as though Near hadn't had a point – Mello and Matt _were_ fighters.

Mello's codename was a ridiculous juxtaposition given that – but for the absence of a single letter – it came out as "mellow" and he was anything but. He was aggressive and hot-headed, competitive and reckless. He possessed all of L's inventive ability but none of his calm. He thought and acted on the move – sitting still for too long drove him mad.

As for Matt… he was more content to stay in one place. He disliked the outside world, sharing one thing in common with Near, at least, and preferred to enter the worlds conjured up by graphics companies and game designers. He was generally laid-back – more fitting of Mello's codename than the blonde himself was. But then people took that for granted about Matt – ignore him long enough and he becomes part of the furniture. That wasn't true; he was smart and a hard worker and third in line for L's title.

He _did_ have a temper, incidentally; it rarely surfaced, but perhaps _he_ was most like L in that respect. Mello flew off the handle all too frequently and Near was utterly apathetic about everything.

Matt possessed aggression to match Mello's, and now and then, he used it.

It looked as though they were fighting when they had sex because, in a strange way, they _were_.

"Matt…!" Mello shoved at Matt's shoulder irritably. "Don't dig your nails into me. It freaking _hurts_!"

Matt loosened his grip on Mello's slender shoulders, glancing up at the blonde with a smirk.

"Bitch, bitch, bitch," he grinned, kissing him with teeth, attempting to set off a reaction from the kindling his action and words provided. "That's all you do, Mello. It's always me or Near or Kira. Just what the hell would you talk about if we didn't all piss you off?"

"I would talk about how wonderful my life was," Mello bit out, now staring blankly at the ceiling, counting cracks in the toneless paint and murky water stains creeping in from the corners.

"Ouch." Matt's grin didn't deteriorate, seeing that his tactics were working, since Mello was now doing his best to ignore him. "You're holed up in a crummy LA apartment with me, the love of your life, doing it on a bed that sounds as though it's about to collapse at any moment, and you think your life isn't wonderful? Don't forget we're trying to catch the greatest mass-murderer in the world. Some people would kill for this kind of excitement – pun not intended."

"Ugh," Mello groaned in disgust, actually shoving Matt away. "Why don't I just kick you out of bed and ignore you?"

"Because no-one else makes you feel as good as I do." Matt beamed. "And no-one else could ever manage to willingly get you into bed to begin with."

"How do you know there aren't other people I'd sleep with?" Mello replied moodily.

"Because then you'd be a whore."

"Maybe I _am_ a whore."

"Yeah, I guess you kind of look like—"

Mello actually_ did _kick him out of bed for that and then folded his arms, averting his annoyed gaze to the ceiling once more. Matt landed in a clumsy heap on the floor, limbs falling akimbo, and the back of his head and neck taking most of the force behind the fall.

"_Ow_…" Matt rolled over and picked himself up with a shake of his head. He hauled himself back up onto the mattress again, a spark of anger in his eye that Mello had gotten first blood, and eager to get his own hits in. "Hey, _you_ said it!"

"I'm sick of the childish bickering, Matt." Mello glanced at him, eyes narrowed in a warning glare. "Either cut the crap and fuck me or go back to your computer. I was in the middle of something anyway."

"What, complaining about Near?"

"Matt, you're really pissing me off now."

"You _were_ complaining about Near!" Matt responded indignantly. "That's why I kissed you, to make you shut up about him, and then we kind of came over here to the bed because it's getting late and this is what we _usually_ do at night, and we were sort of getting undressed when you told me not dig my nails into you."

Mello took the unnecessary play-by-play as an opportunity to shrug off his unbuttoned black shirt, leaving just his rosary stark against his pale skin.

"Right, well, we're _done_ with Near for tonight, okay?" He snapped. "Don't mention him again."

"Yes, sir." Matt saluted him and crawled back over towards him. His own striped sweater was hanging off one shoulder, coyly revealing gracile edge of a collarbone; he pulled it straight as he leaned in to kiss the blonde again, this time for a reason that had nothing to do with Near.

As he slowly softened the edges of Mello's perpetual frown with the persistent manipulation of silken lips, his long fingers closed around the segregated clusters of onyx beads threaded on the rosary hanging from Mello's slender neck. Matt couldn't fathom the reason for Mello's sudden wearing of this as an accessory. While Wammy's House was a Catholic organization, the Christian religion was not forced upon its charges. There was a crucifix hung in every child's room which they could remove if they wanted, but other than the theology of the religion discussed in class, that was it.

Near had taken his down after L had mentioned in passing that he had taken down his while at Wammy's; Matt wasn't especially religious but simply hadn't ever been bothered to climb up and pry the thing from his wall, so it had hung in his room, just as it had in Mello's. But, frankly, that was really the only "Christian" imprint that he'd ever witnessed on Mello other than the rosary he _hadn't_ been wearing when he'd left Wammy's House at fifteen and now wouldn't remove. Matt had even seen him step out of the shower with it still around his neck.

Distracting Mello with a kiss that grew deeper and more demanding, pressing his tongue between now pliant lips, Matt lifted the rosary, meaning to snap it off over the blonde's head in the instant that their lips parted. However, Mello felt the movement of the tiny beads across his chest and reached out, tugging them out of Matt's hand.

"Don't," he growled, pulling back just enough to speak.

"What's _with_ the rosary, Mello?"

"Nothing." Mello's fingers tightened around it. "Just don't." He paused, then added; "What's with the goggles?"

"I've always had them."

"So? Why do you wear them?"

Matt shrugged, perplexed.

"I dunno. I just do."

"Don't be so defensive."

"I'm not—! …_You're_ the one getting defensive over a stupid rosary!"

"It's not stupid."

"What?" Matt blinked at him. "You're not even religious!"

Mello looked away.

"It's still ignorant of you to call it stupid."

"Where the hell did you _get_ it, anyway?"

"Does that matter?"

"W-well… I just—"

"It doesn't _matter_." Mello looked back at him, leaning forwards; his eyes were unreadable. "It's just a rosary. It doesn't _matter_ where I got it from. It doesn't _matter_ if I'm religious."

Matt frowned, slightly thrown by the sharp finality in Mello's voice. He offset the tension by scratching ruefully at his fiery hair.

"Okay, okay… forget I mentioned it. _Jeez_…"

Mello lay in sulky silence as Matt continued where he left off, kissing down the length of his bare throat and onto his chest, tongue tracing the hard lines etched into pale skin. The blonde shifted as though in irritation as Matt neared his belly, making him look up.

"What?" Matt demanded.

"Nothing."

Matt gave a snort.

"If you're not into this, then fine, we'll leave it," he snapped.

"Oh, don't be a jerk," Mello muttered blackly.

"What? _I'm_ being a jerk?" Matt let the incredulous statement ferment before continuing. "I'm doing my best for you here, _princess_, and this is the thanks I get? You telling me to stop being a jerk when I ask you what's wrong because you're lying there like I just fucking smacked you in the face or something?"

"Look, I just… I'm not in the mood right now, okay?" Mello pushed Matt off again and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, pushing up from it. "I'm busy, I was working anyway, and _you_ have work to do, so—"

Matt grabbed Mello's wrist and hauled him back onto the bed, slamming him up against the headboard.

"I was just kidding when I said we should leave it," he murmured, a dark glace coating his voice, as his green eyes turned murky with a possessive lust. "You aren't in the mood right now? Too bad, Mello – _I am._"

Mello's eyes narrowed.

"Matt, I'm _serious_, get—"

Matt grabbed a fistful of Mello's hair and yanked his head far back, making him gasp in pain and surprise. He used that sliver of vulnerability as an opportunity to slam their mouths together, stifling his protests with violent passion. Mello struggled at first, shoving at Matt as he was pinned beneath his weight, but gradually fell below the power of it, matching the redhead blow for blow with an urgency that nearly brought blood. Eventually it was Matt who broke away first, mouth tingling.

"That's better," Matt smirked, feeling smug as he saw that the tip of Mello's tongue was still visible, drawn out as if to follow after the kiss. "Why do I always have to… resort to violence with you, Mello, you… little masochist?"

"If we're… doing it, let's get on… with it," Mello panted in reply, twisting Matt's shirt in his grasp as though trying to rip it. "I still… have work to do."

Matt laughed.

"You won't… have the energy for it…"

Without missing a beat, Mello grabbed the hem of Matt's stripy top and pulled it off over his head, ruffling up his hair.

"We'll see who has no energy," he said with a smirk of his own, rising up to the challenge with his own insatiable drive.

It was the signal for the "battle" to begin; Matt met this smirk and slammed Mello to the mattress, once again pulling his head back with a fist of hair. He began devouring his throat again, nipping and biting a painful trail before lathing the hurt away with his warm tongue. His hands blindly worked at the zip of the blonde's black jeans, able to dislodge them through muscle memory alone. He pulled them down, Mello's twisting beneath him only aiding their descent, and tossed them off over the side of the bed to join both of their shirts. Matt's own heavy khaki pants soon followed as Mello, refusing to be outdone, twisted the buckle of his belt loose and snapped the poppers open, sliding them off over his legs.

"It's fucking freezing in here," Matt muttered, on the pair of them suddenly being bared but for their shorts. A draft curled coolly across their exposed backs, somewhat siphoning off the heat created by their passion.

"I think… the heating's bust…"

"Fuck, Mello… this apartment _sucks_, you know that?"

Mello used Matt's own move against him, grabbing the hair on either side of his temples and forcing him down for a harsh kiss.

"Shut up, Matt," he hissed, biting and pulling at his lower lip. "Shut the hell up already."

Matt returned the kiss with a hint of teeth in place of an answer. He snatched the bedsheets and pulled them up over himself and Mello, creating a skin to collect their combined body heat.

"That's better," he murmured, grinding himself down against the blonde, feeling the futilely thin cloth do nothing to hide either of their erections; Mello gave a moan that sounded half-pleasured and half-annoyed, arching upwards into Matt.

"Impatient," Matt panted, running his hands over Mello's chest, "but at least… you're warmer now…"

"Shut _up_!" Mello snapped breathlessly. "Just _do_ it already, for… fuck's sake!"

Matt snickered blackly, pulling off Mello's shorts like he was unwrapping a present, and then playing with the revealed gift like it was a joystick to one of his old school video games.

"I love it when you're all needy—"

Mello squirmed in the bed, nearly whimpering from the painful over-stimulation of Matt's thumb pressing and digging into the honeyed tip.

"Matt, I swear to _God_ I'll put a fucking _bullet_ in your head…!"

"Alright, alright…" Matt left off tormenting Mello's cock and instead grabbed his hips, feeling the delicious hardness of the bones, and flipped him over. The fast unexpected torque left Mello's upper half twisted around in an uncomfortable spiral; Matt helped the transition by grabbing the arm wedged beneath his body and forcing it out and back. But he didn't stop there, and continued pushing at the painful angle until Mello was pressing his face into the pillow. "…You talk to me like you think I'm _Near_ sometimes…"

Mello's fists clenched tightly until his knuckles had gone white at the mere mention of Near, though he said nothing. Matt was leaning over him, still pinning him down with his arm behind his back, and began pulling open the dresser drawer with his free hand hand, rummaging around inside it.

"…Where the hell is it…?"

Mello gave a frustrated groan into the pillow, then glanced up.

"You lost it…?"

"I didn't lose it, I misplaced it—"

"Fuck, just forget it, Matt."

"I'll hurt you, you idiot—"

"Matt, if you go looking for it right now, I'll never speak to you again."

"Fine." Matt slammed the drawer shut again angrily. "Go without, then. Your choice, but it's going to hurt like hell."

"Like I'm not used to that by now anyway—"

"Okay, fine. Whatever you want." Matt was thoroughly pissed off now, and demonstrated it by simply grasping the soft mounds of Mello's ass and forcing two thumbs into his quivering entrance. Mello jerked and struggled to twist away, but Matt didn't give him any time to escape. He plied his thumbs apart, forcibly wrenching Mello open and then slammed himself in.

Mello spasmed and let out a long feral howl that ended in an emphatic "—_Fuck!_" He gripped the bedsheets, twisting them to the tearing point as his body continued to seize up uncontrollably. He was unbelievably full, and his ass felt like it ended in a ring of fire "You could have used a bit of… _spit_ or something, you bastard…!"

"Oh, shut up. It's not like you're a virgin, is it?" Matt snapped in reply. "Take it like a man, Mello."

Still, Matt himself hissed in pain and didn't move for another long moment. Mello's energetic spasms had been very stimulating, and he had almost climaxed simply from that. He held still and breathed until he was under control, allowing Mello the same time to prepare himself, and it was only then that he started to move.

He was used to the feel of Mello by now, but the clinging dryness stung and he found himself digging his nails into Mello's hips once again, biting his lip against the burning friction of it. He was aware that he was hurting Mello and was sorry for it, but honestly, the way the guy behaved sometimes, it made Matt want to stick a _knife_ in him, never mind…

After his first well-earned outburst, Mello made very little sound at all. He gripped the cross of his rosary in his hand tightly, his blonde hair tangled across his sweaty face, teeth grinding together, riding out Matt's thrusts in stubborn silence. Though he couldn't help but give a strangled little cry of Matt's name when the redhead angled his hips downwards and gave a long deep thrust. It was the closest that Mello ever came to begging, but it was those little half whimpers of his name that always drove Matt into an erotic frenzy.

"Is that… better now…?" Matt panted.

Mello nodded in silence, feeling the shape of the crucifix embed itself in his palm.

"Good…" Matt whispered it, barely able to talk, driving into the blonde harder again just to hear his name gasped, followed by Mello's idea of a prayer – a mixture of profanity, blasphemy and his lover's name. The maledictions rose from his mouth along with a swirl of deeply lascivious colors and scents, powerful enough to make both of them quiver from the onslaught of sensation, and the intensity of which neither one could have ever dreamed of accomplishing on his own, nor with anyone else.

Mello and Matt's lovemaking was an alchemy all its own – a union of chemicals kept apart by even the most knowledgeable of scientists for fear of the potentially-fatal explosion that would result via their being mixed.

After all, no-one had ever said that making gold was either easy or safe.

* * *

Ryuk was in the room when Light's eyes fluttered open, though thankfully he wasn't leaning over him in his vulture-like stance.

"I knew it," he cackled gleefully, eyes gleaming at L nestled up next to Light, still sleeping. "I always knew there was something funny with you and that L guy…!"

"I didn't say you could come in here!" Light hissed, sitting up. "Get the hell out!"

Ryuk stuck out his tongue and didn't budge.

"No way," he snickered. "I'm sticking around to see what you do next. It's obvious you just wanted that heart so you could have a jolly old time last night with your little dead boyfriend, but now what…? You can't leave him like that, even though it'll last twenty-three days. His "death" is all over the news, and what will you do about the absence of the Kira task force? Say they went out for lunch?"

Ryuk cracked up laughing again at his own pathetic attempt at a joke, rocking backwards and forwards in mid-air.

Light glared at Ryuk, then looked away ruefully.

"No, I… I've already dealt with it."

Ryuk tilted his head, glancing again at L.

"He's still breathing," he pointed out.

"At the moment." Light looked down at the sleeping detective. "I wrote his death in the notebook last night, after he fell asleep. If I don't disturb him, he simply won't wake up, at least not… _alive_."

Light reached over, taking the Death Note out of his bedside drawer and opening it to find the page; he turned it around to show it to Ryuk.

"_L Lawliet, 8:00am, dies peacefully in sleep_," Ryuk rattled off. "You're over the heart attacks, then?"

"Well, it seems cruel for him to have to suffer three." Light closed the notebook again and put it back, shutting the drawer. "At least this way he won't be in any pain."

Ryuk giggled unkindly.

"You have no idea, do you…?"

Light frowned at him, suddenly feeling the now all-too-familiar apprehension of missing information.

"…What?" His chocolate eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

"Heh heh, you'll have to just wait and see." Ryuk waved gleefully and went skipping off through the wall again.

"Hey!" Light scrambled out of bed, holding the sheets around his waist so that he wasn't completely naked. "Ryuk! Get back here!"

Ryuk's head came back through the wall, looking like a hunting trophy.

"I thought you told me to get out."

"Th-that was before… before you—"

"'S'okay, I'm coming back. Just going to get an apple." The Shinigami smirked. "I wouldn't miss this for the world."

He took off again; Light sank back onto the bed, draping the sheets over his lap. He turned his head to look at L, who was curled up on his side, his face buried in the crook of his elbow.

Light looked at the clock, reading off 7:42am. Still eighteen minutes until the borrowed heart in L's chest gave out and returned him to his far more unpleasant state.

Light had lost his shirt sometime during the events last night, but L was still wearing his, though that was all. He guessed he'd probably better wake him up and get him to get dressed again, since the dead version probably wouldn't take too kindly to waking up half-naked.

Hell, he probably wasn't going to take very kindly to any of this, but Light was prepared to face him – he was expecting the homicidal temper tantrum this time, at any rate.

He quickly pulled his own clothes back on and then crawled back over to L, gently shaking him awake. L stirred, opening his eyes a little and lifting his head.

"Hey," Light greeted him quietly.

L smiled at him.

"Good morning, Light-kun." He sat up a little, rubbing his eyes on his sleeve. "You're already dressed. Are we late? Did we oversleep?"

"No, it's…" Light paused, feeling the aching lump in his throat manifest itself again watching L like this, oblivious to the fact that he had about fifteen minutes left to "live". "…It's okay, we're… it's only seven forty-five."

"I'm picking up your bad habits, Light-kun." L gave a yawn. "Look, I'm even still sleepy."

Light handed him his jeans and underwear in silence, watching him pull them back on and sit up properly, running his hands through his black hair to make it sit a little more tamely. He tilted his head at Light, who was still simply observing him in utter deathly silence.

"Light-kun is usually much more vocal than this," he pointed out; he leaned towards the younger man. "You seem very sad. Have I done something to upset you?"

Light gazed at him for a moment still; then shook his head.

"No, you haven't done anything, it's okay." He gave a small sigh. "…It's just me."

"At least you aren't crying again. I thought you didn't like me anymore."

Okay, so L wasn't particularly adept at cheering people up – he was much better at putting them in a bad mood – but the guy got points for trying…

"Of course I still like you. I… I was crying because I love you so much."

L blinked, and Light could practically see him processing the percentage of truth in the statement, and the relevance to their current situation.

"Is that a normal occurrence?"

"I don't know… It's not completely unheard of."

"That seems strange, that you would cry because you love someone so much. Shouldn't that make you happy?"

"Well, it's just…" Light trailed off; there was no point. He didn't have either the time or the strength to make L understand. "No, you're… you're right." He smiled weakly. "It's stupid."

"I didn't say it was stupid. I said it was strange."

"Well, maybe one day… _you'll_ cry because you love someone so much, and then you'll understand."

L gave him an odd little smile.

"You sound like a parent talking to a child, Light-kun."

Light was silent for another long while, not really listening to him.

"Light-kun?"

Without a word, Light took L's shoulders and gently pulled him close, tilting his head, closing the distance until they were connected; the detective blinked hesitantly, almost pulling back for a fraction of a second, but after a moment he relaxed and kissed back dutifully, his hands on Light's chest.

"You love me, don't you, Ryuzaki?" Light whispered, pressing his face into L's shoulder. He was unable to look into the mirror while asking, unable to face the murderer reflected there.

L simply cocked his head in the same endearing way he always did, ran through a quick jumble of factors before answering with a patient sigh.

"Yes, Light-kun."

"Say it." Light's voice was barely audible, whispered into the fabric of L's white top. "Please let me hear you say it."

"I love you, Light-kun."

Light gave a small nod, still hiding his face like a small child; then raised it, kissing desperately at L's throat. Between kisses he glanced at the bedside clock; 7:54am.

Just six minutes.

Still touching little butterfly kisses to L's white neck, Light pushed him to the mattress, letting him lie back with his head on the pillow while the detective blinked up at him.

"Light-kun, we don't have time for this," he said.

"For what?" Light asked by way of reply, sliding his hands up underneath L's top and up over his abdomen.

"For—_ah_!" L arched upwards under Light's touch, though Light himself couldn't smile at the manipulation, the warmth of L's flesh beneath his fingertips just a reminder of…

Five minutes left.

L gave another cavernous yawn, nestling deeper into the pillows and bedsheets.

"Still tired," he murmured, a sleepy little smirk on his face. "We should… probably get more sleep at night…"

_You're not tired; you're dying…_

Biting his lip, Light ran his hands further up over L's chest; the detective wasn't reacting at all now, only giving a small sigh and closing his eyes.

"…Ryuzaki?" Light asked softly.

L opened his eyes just a sliver, eyelids wavering heavily.

"Yes… Light-kun?" He asked quietly; his eyes did slide shut then, as though he truly couldn't keep them open.

"…I love you."

He received no answer this time; L was still breathing, but he'd fallen asleep again, this time no doubt unwakenable in order for the Death Note to successfully carry out Kira's command.

Still with his hands on L's chest beneath his top, Light guided his fingers over to the heart that would no longer work in—

He stopped dead. The skin over L's heart wasn't smooth; it was… ribbed, or…?

Light wrenched up L's shirt, baring his torso completely; and therein was presented with the reason why L – the "dead" version, anyway – had obviously always smacked Light away when he'd tried to undress his upper half.

There was a vertical, perfectly straight and clean gash over where L's heart would be – no blood, though it was clearly open and showed no sign of healing over. The only thing that held his flesh together was lacing, looped through his skin via holes that didn't bleed and crossed over like the fastenings found on a corset. The binding cord was thin and black, resembling silk ribbon, though Light was sure that it couldn't be…?

Of course it made _sense_ for there to be some sort of opening, if he was going around shoving other people's hearts into himself, but…

Just what kind of monster had L _become_ on being dragged from the earth of his resting place?

Light could do nothing but gaze at him, once more stunned into silence, as he slept – a reverse of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, about to die rather than be awakened. His eyes were drawn to the macabre stitching over the man's heart, as though done clumsily by Victorian body snatchers out to harvest organs in the name of science—

Or _alchemy_.

The digital bedside clock flipped over to 8:00am, and even as Light watched, unable to do anything, the rise and fall of L's chest slowed and then stopped completely; he fell completely still, the little color that had tinted him in this "living" state draining out of him.

And then, if Light had still harbored any doubts as to whether or not Matsuda's stolen heart had stopped working, blood began to seep from the seams of the lacing over where it had been held. Light was sickened but couldn't bring himself to move away, even as the blood welled enough to roll over down L's still ribs and pool on the sheets.

"An interesting one, isn't he?" Ryuk sniggered; Light jumped, startled, as he hadn't realized that the Shinigami was back in the room.

"When did you come in?" Light bit out, looking over his shoulder at him.

"A while ago." Ryuk juggled the two apples he was holding, one half-eaten. "Told you I wouldn't miss this."

"This isn't a game, Ryuk," Light snapped in disgust.

Ryuk tossed the bitten apple into his mouth, crunching it with relish.

"Then how come you're treating it like one?" He queried through his mouthful.

Light frowned, unexplainably disturbed by the simple question.

"Why… am _I_…?"

Ryuk laughed his usual unsettling "I-know-something-you-don't" laugh and said nothing more; Light was distracted from him by the shifting on the mattress that signaled L's reawakening. He turned to face L just as he sat up, his top sliding back down to cover the little secret he had obviously never intended Light to know about.

He looked up at Light, death shroud firmly in place, obscuring the reflection in his eyes, as expected.

Light said nothing; tensed and ready for whatever L would do, but silent. After all, L had told him not to do this again, and he _had_, and the last time he had almost _died _from L's retribution…

"…You love me, don't you, Light-kun?" L said, his voice quiet but emotionless; turning Light's begging question back on him.

Light sucked in a breath; of course he did, but admitting it to _this_ L was…

"Y-yes." He released the air he had been holding in. "I do. I love you."

"Then don't bring me back to life again."

L said nothing else; just got off the bed and, perfectly able to walk again, left the room, pulling the door firmly behind him.

Stunned and speechless, Light looked at the door; and after a moment, Ryuk started to laugh again.

"I'm surprised," he snorted. "After last time, I thought he'd murder you."

"I… I don't understand." Light's words were distant; when he spoke, it felt as though his voice was separated from his body. "I… did it for him, I thought it would make him happy…"

"You sure you didn't do it for yourself?" Ryuk sniggered. "I think you probably had just as much "fun" last night as he did…"

"But he's so unhappy the way he is!" Light burst out. "I don't understand why… I mean, what can I _do_?! I thought if he was able to forget… forget the pain of having been dead and then brought back to life, knowing that I killed him, even if it was just for one night, it would make him happier."

Ryuk was eating his other apple by this point, not appearing very interested.

"You know, last night… he was talking about alchemists, and about how alchemy was just human greed, how they wanted to extend life and create wealth and stuff… I mean, _he's_ human, isn't he? And even if he isn't now, he was last night, so then… if he has the opportunity to come back to life, why is he telling me not to—?"

"See, this is the other thing with you humans," Ryuk interrupted, swallowing the last of his apple. "You don't know anything about death, so you're afraid of it. All these alchemists you're on about… they were human, right? That means they were alive, and, therefore, knew nothing about death. Probably why they were trying to find a way to extend life. Now, I'm not saying that being dead is any better'n being alive, but I'm a Shinigami, so I know a thing or two about it." He pointed a long, clawed finger at Light. "I know about alchemy too, incidentally – I've been watching the human world for a very long time, don't forget. Now, in your world, it's impossible to bring the dead back to life beyond the capabilities of modern medicine, so it seems like those alchemists were wasting their time. You may not know that in actuality, the pursuit of reawakening the dead was actually forbidden by both the state and the church. You know why?"

Light numbly shook his head, unable to gear his brain up in order to come up with an answer.

"Because it screws up the natural order, that's why," Ryuk said. "Why do we Shinigami exist? For the same reason that death itself does; because the world would be a pretty awful place without it. Imagine if nobody died – think how overcrowded the world would be, think of what people would be capable of _doing_ to one another. I mean, you, with your little way of "cleaning up" the world by killing criminals – it's a permanent way of getting rid of them, sure, but it's also a way of punishing them, because humans aren't too big on dying. People are scared of it, but it's not evil – it's necessary. Of course, you humans don't think about that because you don't like the thought of not being alive any more, so before you realized it was actually impossible to reanimate the dead, you tried all sorts of wild ideas to prolong your mortality. Death is frightening to those who are still alive, but to those who know its nature, it's no big deal."

"That doesn't explain anything, Ryuk," Light snapped. "If L has come this far – already brought back to the realm of the living – then why not end the suffering it's causing him and forget it by being brought back to life? He's already established that he can't go back to his grave, so what else is left for him?"

"The state of being alive and the state of being dead are two very different things," Ryuk explained airily. "They are like…" he paused, casting about for a proper analogy. "Uh… like… oil and vinegar, yeah. You can always add an emulsifier, but that doesn't make it a nice dressing." He cackled at his own cleverness before continuing. "To you, it just looks like you're giving that L guy a heart and then he faints and wakes up again alive, and then when it's time to kill him he just passes out again and opens his eyes back as the cold scary version that hates you. But it's not like that at all, not to him, and it's just as I said – you really have _no_ idea at all."

"I…" Light trailed off. "Does… does it _hurt_ him…?"

Ryuk's yellow eyes gleamed with a greedy malevolence as he began to giggle once more, drinking in Light's pain like a fine wine.

"It's _agony_," he smirked. "You're dragging him back and forward across two realms of existence – the living and the dead. A human is only meant to cross that borderline once, when they die. You're _torturing_ him, Light – it's a pain of the mind and body that neither you or I can understand, but I know the mechanics of it, and it ain't pretty. That's why I thought he was going to kill you for doing it to him twice. He has more self-restraint than I thought."

Light opened his mouth, but no words came out.

"You still don't get it? You're worse than any alchemist, Light – you're condemning your little boyfriend to die over and over again, simply for your own pleasure." Ryuk smirked. "You're even more of a bastard than I thought."

The Shinigami straightened and began to saunter out of the room through the door.

"Well, see ya later."

"Why didn't you _tell_ me what I was doing to him?!" Light yelled after him furiously.

Ryuk laughed again, his voice carrying even as he slid completely through the door.

"I wanted to see what he would do to you. I have to say, I'm a little disappointed…"

Light sank back onto the bed, his eyes burning but now without a single tear to shed, though now was a time when they were probably most deserved.

He hadn't realized, he hadn't been hurting L deliberately; but then, when was any alchemist ever known to have considered the pain of their pursuit?

* * *

"You didn't break the skin." Matt ran his fingers over the dark bruising mark Mello had left on his throat. "Jeez, you're like a freakin' _vampire_, you know that?"

Mello gave a snort and turned over, closing his eyes again; he was still in bed, though Matt had opted to get up and start getting dressed.

"Hey, get up!" Matt snapped, throwing his goggles at Mello; they hit the covers pulled up over the blonde's head, doing no damage.

"Ugh, why?" Mello groaned, not moving. "We're not going anywhere. We're just going to work on finding Kira, and I can do that from here. 'Sides, it's still way early. It's not like _you_ to be up already, come to think of it."

"I still have all these boxes lying around. Roger or whoever packed it all didn't put all the relevant stuff together. You know, I haven't seen my eight hundred gig external hard-drive for like a month."

"Maybe it got left behind at Wammy's and Near found it and thought it was a Transformers action figure or something…"

"Don't even joke like that, Mello," Matt muttered darkly, finding his striped top and pulling it on. "You know, you could get up and help me find it."

"Yeah, right." Mello yawned. "I don't even know what you're talking about."

"Okay, well, it's kind of square and black, with a bunch of wires and some little colored lights on it."

"Ooh, way helpful." Mello went right under the sheets, ending the conversation.

Matt gave a sigh and went next door, stacking up a few taped-up boxes and carrying them back into the bedroom; he dumped them onto the bed with such force that the mattress bounced, unsettling Mello and making him bolt upright, surfacing from his low-quality hidey-hole.

"Matt, what the hell…?!" He blazed indignantly; he was still completely naked except for his rosary, though Matt handed him up his black shirt as he flopped down onto the sheets next to the five boxes he'd tossed unceremoniously there.

The redhead beamed.

"Love ya," he said brightly, leaning in and kissing Mello's cheek; "You can still help me," he went on, pushing a box towards the blonde. "I've brought the work to you."

"Thanks a lot," Mello bit out, shrugging on his shirt and leaving it open as he pulled a box towards himself and tore off the tape. He opened it up, going through it – it was mostly polystyrene packing peanuts with a few little plastic devices scattered in amongst them like the high school computer club's Lucky Dip.

"What the hell are these?" He demanded, lifting one up between his fore finger and thumb, holding it away from him as if it might bite; Matt glanced at him.

"Connection adaptors," he replied. "You know, if your internet connection wire doesn't fit, you can put one in the connection port and—"

"Okay, yeah." Mello tossed it back into the box. "Sorry I asked."

He pushed that box over the side of the bed and started on another one, finding more packing peanuts and a bound bunch of – surprise surprise – connection wires.

"Mello…"

Examining the wires in immense disinterest, Mello answered with a yet more jaded nuance to his voice;

"_What_?"

"You… you have to see this…"

Mello glanced up, his eyes hooded.

"What is it, your collection of novelty mouse mats? I have to say, Matt, as your friend… that was a really uncool hobby."

"No." Matt's tone was deadly serious as he picked up the box he just opened and plonked it in front of the blonde. "This box, the… stuff in it… I think it belonged to…"

"…_L_," Mello finished, his voice hollow. He reached inside the box, running his fingers over the books wrapped in thin, translucent paper and the folded, worn clothes packed beneath them. "…Matt… where did you get this?"

Matt shrugged.

"Roger must have sent it over with my other stuff." He scratched at his red hair. "I don't know, I guess… it was a mistake. I mean, I know most of the stuff he had in Japan was packed up and sent back to Wammy's House for Roger to deal with. This must be one of the boxes – guess it got mixed up with mine."

"Hey, Matt, remember this?" Mello lifted the top book – a leather-bound hard-cover edition of Conan Doyle's _The Hound of the Baskervilles _– out of the box and carefully unwrapped it. "L let me borrow it once and we snuck out down to the playroom in the dark to read it after everyone had gone to bed because we thought it would be really cool and scary, only we really _did_ get scared because some dog started barking and we hid in that cupboard for like an hour…?"

Matt smiled, taking the book.

"Yeah, I remember that. It's not really that scary but I had nightmares for a week after that…"

"_Sherlock Holmes_," Mello mused. "Figures."

He went back into the box as Matt wrapped the book back up again and laid it aside.

"Hey, what's this?" Mello wondered aloud, digging out a thin rectangular package wrapped in Japanese newspaper. He turned it over in his hands, glancing at Matt, who shrugged.

"Dunno. Open it."

Mello gave a nod, pulling off the wrapping to bare a small notebook, covered in royal blue suede, with a silver clasp and border.

"Notebook," Mello said, frowning at it.

"Not the Death Note?"

"No, it's just a regular notebook." Mello flipped it open to the first page – revealing a written two-way conversation in spliced Japanese-English.

"That's L's writing," Matt said, blinking.

"Some of it is," Mello agreed. "I don't who the other person is, the one who wrote first. Let's see…" He squinted at the first line of hand-written kanji. "…It says '_Happy birthday, Ryuzaki_', I think."

"Who's Ryuzaki?"

"Must be an alias L used while hunting for Kira in Japan. Hang on… L wrote… '_Thankyou, Light_'.

"So… the person he was talking to was called… _Light_?" Matt said. "As in, the English word "light"?"

"Seems like it. I mean, it's the kanji for 'moon', but written like this, I think it comes out as 'light'… Oh, here. They're writing in English now." Mello followed the words with his finger. "'Light', if that was his or her name, wrote '_I love you_', to which L responds '_I believe you_'."

"Ever the romantic," Matt noted dryly. "So who was Light? A girl? A guy?"

"I don't know." Mello mussed the back of his gold hair in thought. "With a name like that, it's difficult to tell. He or she is – or was – probably Japanese, though." Mello pointed first at Light's kanji and then at L's. "While L's Japanese is very good, the formation of it just isn't as natural as "Light's", who was probably a native speaker of the language."

Matt snorted.

"What surprises me more is that _L_ was apparently involved in the kind of relationship with someone, no matter their gender, that would warrant him responding to 'I love you'," he said flatly, arching an eyebrow. "He always seemed like such a loner to me. Nice guy, but not exactly husband material, you know?"

"Oh, right, and _we_ are." Mello swiped at Matt with the notebook.

"Is there anything else in it?" Matt asked, ducking Mello's swing at him.

Mello flipped through the blank pages of the notebook.

"No, I don't think so… _Wait_." Mello stopped dead, flipping backwards frantically in search of the few scrawled words he'd seen nestled on a blank page in the heart of the notebook, flanked on either side by equally-blank pages of notebook wasteland. "I just saw something… back here…"

"What is it, another love letter to darling Light?"

"Uh, no, it's…" On finding the page, Mello's eyes widened, and he dropped the notebook, speechless.

Matt glanced warily at him, reaching for the notebook.

"What, is it really pervy or something?"

Mello shook his head numbly as Matt picked up the notebook to read the words for himself.

There, in plain English, in L's own handwriting, was the message that he'd clearly been determined to pass on to his heirs:

_Light Yagami is Kira_

* * *

It always fell upon Roger to deal with Near; although the pale boy was not a threatening presence, instead small, quiet and in fact fairly polite in his manner, the other aides and care-workers were unnerved by him and the other children afraid of him.

There _was_ something about Near, Roger could confess; not a mean streak, exactly, but an underlying hint of a devious nature that would drive him to twist the bounds of human nature in just about any way that he could to get what he wanted.

It had been in L, too.

Despite their loud and boisterous nature, Mello and Matt had been easier to deal with and had been, during their time at Wammy's House, quite popular amongst the other children, though they had preferred each other's company more than anyone else's.

Mello and Matt were both smart enough to succeed L but, honestly, they weren't really anything like him.

But Near was.

And so, when Roger finally traipsed up to Near's room after everyone had reported having not seen him for several days, he shouldn't have been surprised to find the teenager's room completely empty. He knew Near liked to be alone and so tried not to impose on him, thus it having been so long before he'd bothered to come up and check on him at all.

But Near was gone, and so were quite a few of his belongings, both favorite and essential.

There was, however, a small white envelope sitting on the otherwise-clear desk.

Roger went over to the desk, finding that the envelope was actually addressed to him, his name spelled out in Near's tiny neat block capitals. He opened it, slipping out the small note inside and adjusting his glasses so that he could read it.

_R_

_Departed for Japan to find K; following a lead left by L. M and M will probably head there too, I have no doubt. _

_I will contact you if I need anything._

_N_

Roger gave a small sigh and folded the note. Anyone else might have been surprised to find that Near – famous at Wammy's House for being the only child capable of staying in one place for hours on end, almost completely unmoving, like a porcelain doll – had upped and left just like that, but Roger wasn't.

He'd been expecting it, frankly; and now all three of the problems Kira had created for himself were out there against him—

Just as L had intended them to be.

* * *

_Search for beauty, find your shore;  
Try to save them all, bleed no more.  
You have such oceans within,  
In the end, I will always love you…_

_- The Poet and Pendulum_; Nightwish

* * *

Oh, poor Light. No matter what he does, he's still a royal screw-up…

Everyone who thought things were going to be better from now on – Light would just keep L supplied with hearts for bedroomly hi-jinks to soothe the whole "You-killed-me-you-bastard" friction between them…

…Yeah. Sorry about that. As we said in the closing ANs last chapter, the "solution" comes with a price. Of course, Light _could_ just keep giving him hearts, but after L has finished loving him he'll just hate him even more. And of course he can't leave him alive for 23 days… What a _dileeeeeeeeeeeeemma_…

The intenseness of the sex scenes is down to Narroch, not me (mwa ha ha, yes, I _so_ blamed you…). I wrote them initially but kind of got a bit half-assed towards the end of both of them… Oh well… The point of having both LxLight and MattxMello slammed right next to one another was to illustrate the differences between the relationships – L and Light are more refined, seemingly more loving…

But then Light kills L (again) and L goes back to loathing him for killing him (again). Mello and Matt might bite, kick, punch and swear at one another, but ultimately, their relationship is a lot less fucked up…

Go figure.

And now for fun stuff! I changed my poll again, asking who you think would win between L (world's greatest detective) and Lupin III (world's greatest thief). Heh heh… It's 50-50 so far; a contrast to the result of my last poll about what kind of ending you'd prefer in _Poison Apple_, in which 'Happy Ending' won in rather a landslide victory (although there _were_ 20+ votes for a 'Tragic Ending').

**OTHER FUN STUFF: **I have three new video links also up in my profile (under a heading that says 'Other Random AMVs' or something like that) that you should all check out, they're all very funny! Two are _Death Note_ and one is a _Lupin III_ version of the _Caramelldansen _which is very, very well animated. The _Death Note_ ones are also highly amusing… :)

'Share the wealth', in the immortal words of Homer J. Simpson.

Everyone, thankyou once again for all the reviews later chapter! Hope you liked this one just as much! Yay for the short-lived LxLight pr0nz!!1111!!1eleven!!1!

TTYS!

RobinRocks and Narroch xXx


	24. Eye For An Eye

Whoa, another overwhelming result review-wise for last chapter! Thankyou all so much! We're both so very glad that you're all enjoying _Poison Apple_ so much that almost all of you feel the need to let us know! :P

Today's update, though shorter than both _Heart Sick_ and _Alchemy_, is for two reasons:

**One:** Today is Independence Day over in America. Happy 4th July to all of you in the US, from both Narroch (a representative of the USA) and myself (a representative of the tea-obsessed guys you threw out)!

**Two: **Just yesterday, I, RobinRocks, returned from another trip to Disneyland Paris – call it an "anniversary trip" to the birthplace of _Poison Apple_, exactly a year after its inspiration. :)

Well, it had its ups and downs. Downs included the horrific time we had checking in to our hotel, my _Sleeping Beauty_ tiara from last year snapping in half in my suitcase and all the rides breaking down and being unable to run on our last day so we couldn't get on anything (and me not getting a _Dragonball Z_ toy in my MacDonald's Happy Meal. How dare you try to fob me off with _Kung Fu Panda_…). Ups included mostly-lovely weather, the fact that my _Sleeping Beauty_ tiara broke forcing me to get a bigger, better, more extravagant _Sleeping Beauty_ tiara and a great day for rides on Wednesday, including our Fast Pass to the brand-new _Twilight Zone Tower of Terror_ ride (and me buying an abundance of _Sleeping Beauty_ merchandise and a teeny-tiny _Snow White_ bag shaped like an apple… So morbid and appropriate I _had_ to buy it… O.o).

We were also first in line for the _Snow White_ ride on Wednesday morning. Such a freaky ride, all who were involved in the "going-on" of it agreed. Terrifying, really, considering it has no height restriction, goes about a mile an hour and obviously attracts all the little girls in their _Snow White_ dresses. It's all Evil Queen, skeletons and scary trees with faces trying to grab you and very little of Snow White herself.

…In retrospect, having gone on this ride last year, I believe this was in fact the true inspiration for _Poison Apple _as I stood in that mile-long _Space Mountain_ queue. Though, in its own little way, there _is_ something kind of creepy about that film – the "first and fairest of them all", according to Roy Disney…

**Thankyou to everyone who reviewed last chapter!** I regret to say that I am unable to do my usual trick of thanking everyone individually in my usual list, but I keep getting "An Error Occurred" everytime I try to click on the reviews for _Poison Apple _(and I can't possibly remember the name of every single kind person who reviewed). I will go back to doing it next chapter, presuming the review page is accessible to me…

Eye For An Eye

He was down there somewhere.

He could feel him the same way he could feel the fumes creeping up from the streets, permeating everywhere, osmosis through his skin. Kira's stench clung to this city like the tang of rot clung to a corpse, making the air heavy and swollen with spilt blood. He could see Kira in the scared shifty eyes of the people, too afraid to introduce themselves or even make eye contact. He could hear Kira on the radio, the television, as desperate people rallied behind a cause that had immediate and satisfying results.

He was everywhere – and, for a normal person, he was also nowhere.

But Near couldn't be classified as "normal". Kira's overbearing presence that had been intricately woven into the fabric of the city's existence, an overload of data that would have swamped a normal research team, was, for Near, just a rather large fingerprint for him to catalog.

Near hadn't brought much with him to Japan – just a knapsack in which were some clothes, underwear, a few favorite toys, his laptop and L's old _Legends of Popular Greek Mythology_ book, into which he'd tucked his written-on piece of jigsaw to keep it safe on the journey.

It was clutched in his small hand now, as he sat on the windowsill of his hotel room; his laptop was open on the bed, booting itself up, and while he waited, Near had perched himself on the sill to take a look at this new land.

It was bright; lucid and Technicolor, every building bold and sharp against a night sky pale with neon illumination. The muffled wails of sirens, mixed with the hum of 1am traffic, drifted up from that glittering spiderweb matrix, audible even through the muted windows.

It was very different from quiet Winchester – and not just because of all those glimmering, obnoxious lights, the pollution and sounds of the city of Tokyo.

It was because he was down there somewhere.

_Kira._

Near looked at the puzzle piece in his hand, reading off those three words in L's tiny, neat writing.

_Gods of Death_

Near had made as much sense of the whole phrase – _'L, do you know Gods of Death love apples?'_ – as Mello and Matt had; but perhaps the phrase itself wasn't important. It was just a message, a key of communication, from first Kira to L, and now from L to his heirs.

It didn't have to _mean_ anything; and, even if it did, it didn't really matter.

Those three words, written in L's hand, reflected backwards in Near's mirror-mirror eyes as he studied them. Backwards, forwards, whether they meant anything or not… they'd done their job.

They were the instigators, the spark plug, the pin being pulled from a grenade – a detonation which launched Near into a larger truth and a higher goal.

He was down there somewhere; and Near was going to find him.

* * *

_Watari wouldn't have blamed him for this. _

_He had just been that kind of person – someone who never allowed someone else to take the blame. Though he was a fair man, one who never shirked responsibility for his actions, and expected the same resilience from L, neither was he someone who indulged in guilt trips. L knew what he would say, if he were here. He'd say that it wasn't L's fault that they'd both been killed, and that as for Watari's own death…_

…_well, that hadn't been L's fault at all. He'd chosen to become involved with this Kira case, just as L had. He knew the risks and the percentages against their survival, but he still decided to make himself an enemy of a supernatural murderer. He couldn't have L take all the blame, therefore, for his being killed. It had been his own choice to put his life on the line._

_Despite how much he'd grown, it was fair to say that Watari had always seen him as that insecure six year old child, clutching at his hand before the orphanage gates on that icy December day._

—_And a child so small and vulnerable could never be allowed to blame himself._

_But without Watari here to argue with him over this fact, L was __**free**__ to blame himself for the elderly man's death. He was free to wrap those feelings of responsibility tightly onto his own conscious, clutching it tightly as forgiveness evaporated like sea water in a hot wind._

_He couldn't stand to hear Light Yagami even speak his name because Light Yagami had been the executioner; he wasn't sure if the boy had meant to have Watari killed or not, but it had been his doing…_

_And yet, as with every moment of the hellish existence he was forced to endure on this suffocatingly-limited Earthly plane, he was tormented by the twisting of logic this way and that; if only he hadn't __**loved**__ Light Yagami, would…?_

_Hate was easy. It was direct, and simple, and satisfying. A __brilliant bitterness as smooth and fixed as steel. But love… _

_Love was heavy. It turned passion into a fever, affection into an affliction, became the conflicted plane on which they fought each other. It supported them, drew them closer, but would not let them go either. Like the hugging coils of an anaconda, it had crushed them together with their deadly desires until they both broke under the weight of it. _

_Well, there was no answer for it. Light was clever and L… had been only human. He had made mistakes. Perhaps Light hadn't needed the walkway L had created for him._

_Perhaps, even if he and Light Yagami had never crossed paths at all, he and Watari would still have been killed. _

_But because he could never __**know**__ this, he blamed himself. Watari had warned him about Light, about messing around with him, about loving him… but the enchantment of that fairyland they'd created had been too much, and it was a place in which sense and reason just didn't exist. _

_Watari's words had been nothing but the echo of the wind in that world; something L could have listened to, but was far more contented not to._

_Light Yagami had seemed far more important. _

_It was L's fault; of course it was. He hadn't listened, and it had cost him not only his own life, but also the life of the only person who'd ever loved him without simultaneously plotting to murder him._

_The only person whose love had come without a price._

_Watari wouldn't have blamed him for this—_

_But that didn't mean that it wasn't L's fault._

* * *

"Did you call me?" Ryuk asked lazily, poking his head through the office wall.

"Yeah." Light didn't look at him, focused on typing.

"What?" Ryuk pressed, sidling completely through the wall and floating up behind him. "What do you want, Light?"

"Shut up a second," Light snapped, still pouring a fast stream of characters onto the screen. "Jeez, it's not like you were doing anything important…"

Ryuk gave a snort, twirling idly while waiting for his attention.

"You're such a jerk, Light," he muttered.

"And you're a poor excuse for a Shinigami." Light glanced at him, appraising. "Don't go away. I want to ask you something. …What _were_ you doing, anyway?"

Ryuk's giggle was soft, but his teeth strengthened its impact.

"Stalking your little detective friend."

Light faltered in his typing.

"What's he doing that's so interesting?" He asked after a pause, his tone offhand as he backed up the mistake he'd made.

Ryuk shrugged.

"Nothing."

"Then why were you stalking him?"

"I find him interesting."

"You're a _Shinigami_," Light pointed out flatly. "Why the hell would _you_ find a dead person so interesting?"

Ryuk gave a snigger.

"…Well, they're not known for walking around," he supplied eventually.

"Indeed," Light said in disinterest.

"Hey…" Ryuk straightened up indignantly, suddenly realizing a possible reason for the summoning. "You're not going to go make me get _another_ heart, are you, you horny bastard?"

"Shut up!" Light snapped. "No, I _don't_ want another heart for him… I thought I was helping him but now he just hates me even more…"

"Understandable," Ryuk said offishly.

There was silence for a long moment as Light finished up whatever he was working on; then he leaned back, turning his chair towards Ryuk and looked at him pointedly.

"Alright, Ryuk," he said with a sigh, "I've… thought about it long and hard, and… well, Misa is no more and I have a vague memory of someone called Mikami, but… well, I don't know his full name or what he looks like, so I'd never be able to find him…" Light gave another small sigh, kneading his forehead. "…Anyway, the point is, I've pretty much cut ties with everyone around me. I'm out to change the world all by myself this time, and…"

Ryuk was grinning, eyes gleaming like knives in the dark.

"Just spit it out already," he murmured, his voice delighted and slicked over with greedy iridescent oil. "Just say it…"

Light took a breath, glancing away from the Shinigami as he spoke. He was suddenly, silently overwhelmed by the oppressive hunger that was radiating from his twisted wrought iron frame; it felt as though he was eating him alive through his eyes alone, and really, that dreadful feeling wasn't too far from the truth.

"I want to trade for the Eyes," he said firmly, staking confidence to his voice. His cinnamon orbs met with Ryuk's gleaming amber ones as the last word left his lips.

Ryuk's mouth stretched even further, his jagged smile opening up like celluloid dissolving under a drop of acid; he started to laugh, rocking back and forwards in gleeful mirth that shook his whole rawboned body.

"Stop laughing!" Light spat. "It's not _that_ funny, Ryuk. Do you want half of my lifespan or not?"

Ryuk calmed his screeches of laughter down to hiccoughing little giggles, wagging a long, clawed finger at Light.

"You think this isn't funny, Light?" he asked, grin wide and gleaming like that of Alice's Cheshire Cat. "Forgive me, but… I seem to recall you being very certain indeed, a _number_ of times, that you would never give up half your life for—"

"That was a long time ago, Ryuk!" Light snapped, interrupting him and getting up out of his chair. "You think I _want_ to give _you_ half my life?" He gave little dry laugh of his own. "Like hell I do, but… this situation has completely changed, Ryuk. This is my second shot at this, and I'll be damned if I let it play out the way it did the first time. And so, to avoid that, I've taken drastic measures to change it from that first time – I've gotten rid of Misa and the task force, and… damn it, I sure as hell don't want to give up half of my life, but I have a feeling that if I don't, my life isn't going to be that much longer anyway, so… It's another difference, anyway. The first time around… I never had the Shinigami Eyes. Maybe that was the key all along…"

Ryuk shrugged, his grin as wide as a river, teeth jutting like white wave caps.

"You know I don't give a damn about all that, Light."

"Yeah, I do." Light glared at him. "Are you going to give them to me or not?"

"Absolutely, if you're sure about it."

Light paused; let a clipped frustrated hiss file over his teeth, and closed his eyes.

"Yes, I'm sure, Ryuk."

"Then all you have to do to get them is say "Yes" when I ask you if we have a deal." Ryuk smirked. "Think you can do that?"

"I think so, yes," Light replied sourly.

"Okay." Ryuk's yellow eyes suddenly turned phosphorous, backed with gleaming isinglass to better display the prize. "Do we have a deal… Light Yagami?"

"Yes," Light said; quickly, before he could think about it, before he could talk himself out of it…

His eyes suddenly stung; a dry, burning kind of prickle at the back of them, as though sensitive to daylight. He gave a hiss, feeling tears rinse over them in a natural reaction to the uncomfortable sensation, and rubbed at them on his sleeve. It lasted only a few moments, however; and when he'd wiped them dry, he looked up.

…He didn't know quite what he'd been expecting, but from what he could see, there was no difference at all. He looked at Ryuk in puzzlement.

"You won't see my name or lifespan," Ryuk said, as though answering an unvoiced question. "I'm not human. The Eyes don't work on things that aren't human or are dead."

Light gave a nod and left the room without a word.

"No need to say thankyou," Ryuk hawked after him.

"Why the hell should I thank you?" Light snapped back. "It's not like you gave them to me for free!"

Ryuk shrugged, giggling to himself.

"Can't argue with that…"

—

L was in the bedroom, curled up on the floor clutching his knees to his chest with his back against the bed. He glanced up at Light when he entered; blinking at him once or twice, and then looking away again, as indifferent as the rain.

Light suspected that he'd only blinked because somehow he knew that Light was now in possession of Shinigami Eyes – it didn't _surprise_ him that L should know, of course, not because he knew why L would know, but…

Just Because.

Incidentally, Light could read neither L's name nor lifespan either.

Light said nothing to him, crossing the bedroom to approach the mirror on the dresser. They hadn't spoken at all since that morning, when Ryuk had revealed that Light's apparently-selfless little trick of bringing L back to life wasn't quite as charitable and loving as he'd first thought it…

"Of course…" Light muttered it to himself on seeing 'Light Yagami' floating above his head in wavering crimson kanji, but with no jumble of numbers beneath it. "…Owners of Death Notes can't see their own lifespans or the lifespans of other notebook-owners…"

He glanced over his shoulder at L, who hadn't even looked at him again since that initial reaction of dulled surprise.

…He wanted to say something to him; but he didn't want to be ignored. He knew L probably wouldn't answer him, and that was why he held himself back from speaking to him.

Incidentally, in all the time that L had been back here with him, Light didn't think he'd ever seen him looking so forlorn. He didn't follow him around anymore, or talk to him, or tinker around with chess pieces or decks of cards. He just sat wherever he happened to land, curled up in that self-protective little ball, his white-as-snow face hidden by his black-as-ebony hair, and Light…

Light was in utter despair with him. He just didn't know what to do with him. The heartless dead version hated him but largely left him alone; the someone-else's-heart alive version loved him but had that annoying habit of accusing him of being Kira every two minutes; and the transition from one version to the other was like dragging him through a Netherealm wringer…

Light was clutching onto the two sides of an hourglass and begging for an answer, wondering how this was all possible. Light had never stopped loving him but he'd killed him: Light had killed him but he'd never stopped loving him. No matter which way up he twisted it, it was a juxtaposition that just didn't make sense, and although it _shouldn't_ exist, it did, and whether he ignored it or embraced it, it didn't get any better or any worse.

It just stayed the same; the same impossible, painful situation, and he…

…_just didn't know what to do…_

"…I'm sorry."

It was all he could think of to say; and it was something that didn't demand an answer. They were words dropped into an empty gorge, and he could only hope for an echo.

L lifted his head a little, lifeless eyes glinting at him.

"What are you sorry for, Light-kun?" He asked quietly.

"For…" Light stopped; then crossed the floor, kneeling next to him. "…For that heart thing. I… didn't know it was hurting you, L. I promise you, for everything else I've ever done to you… I didn't mean to hurt you. I-I thought… it would make you happy."

L was quiet for a very long time.

"I know," he said eventually.

Light blinked at him, and couldn't stop the small intake of air that response drew. He waited, almost expecting a caustic retort since it was just like L to lead him on like that before cruelly shattering it in Light's ear.

"I… didn't expect you to believe me," he admitted with a weak smile.

L shrugged.

"Maybe I'm a fool to," he agreed absently. "…But I _do_ believe you."

"I… just thought… if you could forget—"

"Like how you forgot about being Kira?"

Light frowned, looking at the bedroom carpet.

"Yeah, I guess so…"

"Were you happier then, Light-kun?"

"L, I… I can't answer that."

"Hn. Yes, I suppose… it's the same as me asking you which is more important to you; me or your pursuit as Kira." L gave a flat, forced little laugh. "…And you've _already_ answered that."

"L, choosing you over my pursuit as Kira would have been selfish…"

"That is your opinion, because you believe that you are doing the world good as Kira. I do not agree, so…"

"I'm not going to argue with you about this," Light said expressionlessly, getting up.

L didn't say anything, watching him through thorns of black hair; still curled up in that same position.

Light paused at the door, looking back at him.

"You know," he said softly, "I know… last night you only said all those things you said because… well, because I'd brought you back to life, so you didn't remember any of this, but… well, I _did_ remember everything, and I… I meant everything I said. I killed you, and I'm not sorry for it because I killed you for a purpose, and because I'm not sorry, I don't expect you to forgive me for it, but I… I love you, L. I don't know why I love you, but I do. I've always loved you, and no matter what happens, I always will."

"Words are meaningless, Light-kun," L replied, looking away again. He met Light's explanation with a cutting off, as though his spirit had a tap – a simple twist to the right and he was closed.

Light's sigh was one of mingled frustration, offense and despair; but he said nothing more, and left the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

L wasn't as aloof about it as he seemed; whilst the idea that love and hate are actually very close was just a silly poetic notion, a brainchild of writers and lyricists, it was by no means mere legend that both could be felt at once.

L had always hated Light; from the moment he'd first set eyes on him there'd just been something about the boy that he'd absolutely despised.

But then, the same could be said for that magnetic attraction. He loved him because he hated him – he hated him because he loved him.

The fact that Light had killed him hadn't helped matters; the fact that Light was the reason he'd been dragged out of both Heaven and his grave was like prodding his wound with a stick of salt; the heart thing hadn't been deliberate, but it had still been Light's fault; and the fact that Light Yagami could stand there and look at him with eyes that he had traded half of his life for – eyes that he no doubt intended to use on L's "little brothers" – and _dare_ to say that he still loved him, as though it made a martyr of poor Kira…

_L hated him_. Words – English, Japanese; mortal, immortal – just couldn't describe how much he hated Light Yagami. The spoken words diminished his feelings, the fragile vocalizations couldn't encompass the intensity of his rage.

But he loved him too – like Light, for reasons he didn't know.

Like Light, he always had, and no matter what happened, he always would.

After all, the rotted remains of their fairyland was all he had left.

* * *

"Found anything?" Mello asked, pausing behind Matt with a cup of black coffee in each hand.

"Well, I've just spent twenty minutes adapting the keyboard to match up with Japanese kanji," Matt replied, reaching up to take the coffee Mello was offering him. "I tried a few English search engines, but this Light Yagami person is undoubtedly Japanese, and we know L was in Japan and incarcerated Kira suspects there, so… I think we need to be searching in the right language."

Mello gave a nod, throwing a hip out in order to lean up against the desk next to the computer.

"How does it work?" he inquired, sipping at his own coffee.

Matt clicked about a bit and brought up a screen laden with row upon row of modern Japanese kanji, each with a letter or keyboard-symbol underneath it.

"We're just using it like a code," he said. "You find the kanji you want and type each corresponding key. It's not perfect, but it's the best we have…" Matt shot Mello a look. "You'd better come and help me. You read Japanese better than me."

"Okay, I'm right here." Mello snapped his fingers at the screen. "Come on, you type and I'll read."

"Sounds like a plan." Matt cracked his knuckles dramatically and typed 'Light Yagami' in the correct kanji into the search bar, hitting Enter with a flourish.

The screen immediately filled itself up with result upon result; Matt gave a whoop of glee and hugged the keyboard.

"Don't get excited," Mello said flatly, leaning in to start reading. "Don't forget, 'Light Yagami' is made up of… _odd_ kanji – 'moon', 'night' and 'god' – which are probably quite common separately. These results aren't necessarily all about him."

"_But it works, Mello_," Matt squeaked in delight, brandishing the keyboard.

Mello ignored him, scanning down the rows of kanji.

"We might not even find anything," he said offishly. "I doubt L made any information about arrests he'd made concerning Kira available to the public, and I doubt Light Yagami, whoever he or she is, was famous enough to be in the news or anything, but they might have… I don't know, a blog or a crappy little website or something…"

"Hey, what's that?" Matt squinted at the screen, then jabbed the result he was speaking of. "I can't read all of it…"

"Click on it."

Matt obeyed, Mello putting his hand on his shoulder to lean in closer to the screen.

"Hey, there's a picture," Matt said. "Some teenage… What does that say? Tennis…?"

"High school tennis champion," Mello translated blandly, busy reading, eyes yo-yoing up and down the screen.

"Is that him?"

"No idea if it's the same person as L was talking about, but this kid's name _is_ Light Yagami."

"He doesn't look very old."

"This article is quite a few years old, Matt." Mello pointed at the date up at the top of the screen. "16th April, 2000. Hang on…" Mello scanned down the article further. "…Says he's fourteen here. It's 2007 now, so that would make him twenty-one, I guess."

"Still seems kind of young for a Kira suspect, don't you think?" Matt mused, sizing him up with an unimpressed air.

Mello turned a reproachful eye on the redhead.

"Matt, I'm nineteen, you're eighteen, and L was a world-famous detective by the time he was _seventeen_."

"This is true," Matt muttered, leaning back. "Okay, so is this the guy we're looking for or not?"

"Not sure." Mello folded his arms. "His name is right, but it's kind of hard to say from an article about some fourteen year old kid who happens to kick everyone's ass at tennis… Go back to the results page, there might be something else."

"Hey, is that him again?" Matt asked of the very next result down.

"Click and find out," Mello responded impatiently.

Matt did so; blinking at the picture of the same boy, now a few years older.

"Yeah, it's him," he said. "What do you know? He _is_ famous. Kind of, anyway."

"What's this one…?" Mello frowned at the page. "…Top score in nationwide practice entrance exams…?"

"Nationwide?" Matt blinked. "As in, the _whole_ of Japan?"

Mello shrugged indifferently, top scorers being nothing new to him.

"Looks like it."

"Christ…" Matt gave a whistle. "Tennis prodigy _and_ smartest kid in Japan? _Jerk_…"

"Hn." Mello bit as his lip. "This is all useless. Type in his name and… _Kira_."

Matt glanced sideways at him, with the reflected screen imprinted on his goggles.

"You really think that's going to work?" He asked dryly.

"Just do it." Mello gave a sigh, raking his fingers though his corn-colored hair. "It probably won't turn up anything, but all this is no good. I doubt that 'Light Yagami' is a common name in Japan, but _he_ can't be the _only_ one, right? We can't just assume this is the one L wrote about."

Matt went back to the search page and, after checking back to his kanji code, typed in 'Kira' after 'Light Yagami'. The results were considerably less this time; Matt looked at them in disappointment, not even trying to read them.

Mello, however, slammed his palm against Matt's shoulder, putting down his coffee.

"Matt, what's that one?!" He demanded, shaking the redhead and pointing at the first result. "Click on it! …For fuck's sake, Matt, hurry _up_!"

"I'm doing it, I'm doing it…!" Matt batted him off, clicking on the search result.

It was another online article; this one very recent, only a day old.

"_Shit_…" Mello breathed, reading down it.

"What, what does it say?" Matt insisted.

"Hang on, let me finish…"

By the time he _had_ finished reading the article, Mello's expression of rattled shock had become a scowl; Matt looked up him in puzzlement.

"What the matter?" He asked.

"This article," Mello snapped. "It's an online copy of a headline piece one of Japan's major newspapers ran yesterday. It says that yesterday morning, a popular model and actress named Misa Amane was found hanged in her hotel room. Apparent suicide. Interestingly… not only was Amane once apprehended as a Kira suspect by the NPA's Kira investigation, but in her room along with her body, investigators found sheets of notebook paper on which she'd written both a suicide note mentioning her loyalty to Kira and a list of all the names of the current members of the Kira taskforce, detailing theirs deaths."

Matt blinked, stunned.

"You mean… this Misa Amane… was _Kira_?" The redhead frowned. "But… why did that result come up with the search words 'Light Yagami' and 'Kira'?"

"Because Light Yagami's name was on the list!" Mello spat. "Turns out he's the son of the NPA's chief investigator, Soichiro Yagami."

"Wh… you mean… he's _dead_?" Matt said faintly. "Light Yagami was killed?"

Mello gave a cold little laugh, filtering through the facade with detached calculation.

"Well, it's not something we can rule out," he said, "but to be honest, Matt… I don't think he is."

Matt frowned.

"What makes you think that? Surely, if the article says his name was on—"

"Well, here's where it gets _really_ interesting…" Mello smirked. "Investigators have found the bodies of all but three people on the list – these three people had, written next to their names, 'body not found'."

"Well, that _does_ seem kind of convenient, but the Death Note—"

"Here," Mello interrupted lazily, picking up a sheet of paper and a pen from the desk. "I'll write down for you, in plain English, the names of the other two people whose names were written on Amane's list and detailed to not be found after death…"

He wrote for a few moments, then capped the pen and handed Matt the sheet; the redhead took it in puzzlement, casting his gaze over it.

"…Are you serious?" He asked after a moment, looking up at Mello.

Mello gave a nod, folding his arms again.

"Kind of suspicious, don't you think?"

"But… L and Watari… died three years ago!" Matt exclaimed, tossing the sheet behind him in exasperation.

"Right, and they were buried in Japan. Roger said so, remember? So obviously it would make sense if their bodies 'weren't found'. But Light Yagami…? Don't you think it's a bit odd that L writes down 'Light Yagami is Kira', L dies, and then three years after his death everyone else on the task force is killed, including L and Watari _again_, and including the person that L said was Kira to begin with?"

"Well, Amane…" Matt shrugged. "L arrested more than one Kira suspect, right? He probably figured that there was more than one Kira. Maybe the model or actress or whatever she was got really mad and—"

"That is a possibility," Mello agreed, interrupting Matt calmly, "but the fact that he could have framed her is equally possible. What gets me is that it says that his body – if there even is one, which I doubt – was dictated as 'not being found'. The only other two "bodies" which were written as not being found were the two on the list who were already dead."

"Maybe Light Yagami was already dead too," Matt pointed out.

Mello shook his head, snapping his fingers at the article.

"Says in here that he attended Tokyo University, studying Law, and that he'll be sadly missed, blah blah blah. If he _was_ killed, it was yesterday with the others, but honestly, Matt… I don't think he _is_ dead." Mello blew a feather of blonde hair out of his eyes irritably. "I really don't."

"Is he the same Light Yagami as that tennis champion kid and Mr Nationwide-Top-Student?"

Mello nodded absently, a faint scowl still etched across his features as he traced out the steps he must have taken.

"Yeah, the article briefly mentions those success, says what a bright future he had…"

"Yeah, a bright future as a mass-murderer, by the sounds of it," Matt muttered blackly.

"That's what I'm afraid of."

"So what do we do?"

"What do _you_ think, Matt?" Mello picked his up coffee, sipping at it again. "We go to Japan and find the little bastard." He flapped his hand at the computer as he walked away. "Book us some flights. We'll leave first thing tomorrow."

Matt heaved an oversized groan, sliding down out of his chair.

"I _knew_ I shouldn't have unpacked everything…"

* * *

"Are you dead, Light Yagami?"

Near lay sprawled on his front on the bed of his hotel room, his laptop open and online on the sheets next to him; he had a spread of Major Arcana Tarot cards in front of him, face-down, and was turning them over one by one.

He held up Death, glancing at it, and held it between two fingers of his left hand as he continued to turn cards over with his right.

"Maybe you'd have us believe that Light Yagami is dead whilst _Kira_…" He held up Judgment, placing it in his left hand next to Death. "…Kira still reigns, alleviating the blame from a dead man. How can a dead man be Kira…? Is Kira now a faceless entity – a figure without an alter-ego who is in the system?" Near smirked to himself, turning over The World. "…Free to rewrite the world as you please, without any fear of being caught? How can we catch someone who doesn't exist…?"

Holding those three separate, Near went through the rest of the cards quickly; adding The Fool to his handful.

"Maybe you'd have gotten away with it… if only L hadn't ensured that you wouldn't. You should have foreseen that…"

Near picked up one last card, sweeping the rest onto the floor; and then he carefully laid out those four – Death, Judgment, The World and The Fool – in a neat row.

"…You should have foreseen that you were never going to win," he said, and dropped the fifth card on top of the original four.

Justice.

* * *

Oh noes! Now Light has the SHINIGAMI EYES!!111!!1eleven!!11!

Which, of course, evens the score again. MNM know Light Yagami is Kira and that he isn't dead; Light Yagami knows MNM exist and now has a tool to find out their names effortlessly and get rid of them.

…And L is moping in the corner.

If you can figure out what happens next, maybe you can also figure out why, in the whole of Disneyland Paris, I did not see one single piece of Aurora merchandise in which she was wearing the blue version of her gown which she wears for the majority of the movie. I know little girls supposedly like pink and all but Cinderella always wears blue, as does Jasmine (well, turquoise… I guess).

Perhaps it's the same reason as to why the Maleficent on the Disney Villains float in the 'Once Upon a Dream Parade' was dressed in red instead of black…

_Hmmmmmm_.

Oh well, at least the lovely stained-glass windows in the _Sleeping Beauty_ castle coloured both of them correctly.

:)

Happy 4th July to all (and if you're not in America, have a pleasant fourth day of the month of July anyway), and TTYS!

RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx


	25. Servatis a Maleficum

Well, Narroch fairly gets around. She sent me the completed version of this chapter from Florida – and the whole reason for today's update (18th July) is to commemorate the one-year anniversary of our first (and thus far only) in-person meeting, when Narroch arrived on British soil on 18th July 2007.

So I guess you could say this is also kind of celebrating the "birthday", of sorts, of _Poison Apple_, given that I sprang the idea for the fic on her while she was over here. :)

Yes, we were together for a whole month, in both the UK and the US. As you can see, the world didn't end (although we may have done some lasting damage to The Walt Disney Corporation in regards to the things certain people will now associate with their princess movies…).

Speaking of, **AutumnDynasty** made me a brand new shiny _Snow White_-inspired _Poison Apple_ icon for my profile. It is very lovely. :D

Thankyou to: **WhiteWolfCub, Scripta Lexicona, FacelessIdol, Cween Almond, OneWhoSitsWithTheTurtles, Lostpharoah, Hikari Daeron, Kai Mine, TheQueenofMediocrity, WithABunny, Kaze Kimizu, daxterandboxer, MiaoShou, kehtolaulu, The Sacred Pandapuff, shad0wform, recipeforinsanity, Fyahe, Peaches-Destroyer, CheeseFaerieXXL, Mayura-Hikari-090, Skyhe, AccordingToMel, Pluto, Mask of Mirage, Synonymous Brian, anja-chan, Tobi Tortue, fantasies4eva, PikaNecoMico, Shima-ru, Layalas, Phoenix of Hell, Creates-Hell-For-Himmmm, Deus3xMachina, DeeJay, Anna, InkHeart17, Insane Author, Chron, Rin Cho, kyousuke21, Magic Mind, SaphirePhoenix, NETTLE'SneverNOTE, Name?, Lawliet's Angel, Liviania, blondevil, rain angst, Anna P.T, ayachan, xxxyuniexxx **and** professorkatze. **

A final point on the meaning of the title: You may recognize the phrase "sevatis a maleficum". It is taken from the Evanescence song _Whisper, _in which "servatis a pereculum, servatis a maleficum" is chanted at the end. It is the Latin for "save us from danger, save us from evil"…

The latter being the meaning of this chapter's title.

Servatis a Maleficum

Light's life as of late had become nothing more than a chain of terrifying discoveries – and his attempts to compensate for them. Waking up at all had been the first, finding a revived L had been the second, and a defiant Misa the third. Those were all shockers, like a jolt, sudden unexplained disturbing, but passing through disbelief quickly enough.

However… this new realization was different.

It was terrifying because it crept up on him in tiny fragments of horror, and shuttled back into the shadows of his mind before he could turn and grasp the full meaning. It came and went in waves of uncertainty, more than just how he was going to survive, or how he was going to kill L (again), or even how he was going to become God.

The queasy flighty uncertainty germinated in his own insecurities; in his sudden inability to know who he was.

He hadn't felt it in Mu – he hadn't felt _anything _in Mu. And even when he had been gathering his mind together in a slightly coherent heap that could function as Light Yagami in a distended numbing atmosphere, he hadn't felt it then either. But one doesn't analyze one's inner workings when fleeing from death; the whole of him had been focused on escaping that nothingness. And when his personal consciousness had popped up with enough wherewithal to both notice itself and realize something was missing, he had already been thrown into L's vengeful presence. Succumbed to the horror, the second road to death that he and his heirs represented.

It had been more about survival, and less about Kira than ever before in his regime.

So it was only now, when his forfeited future felt slightly more secure, and his haunting past felt slightly less homicidal, that he noticed a vital vacancy within himself.

It was a strange state of affairs, really; that L, with his mere presence – and with the imprint of the relationship he and Light had shared prior to his death – could make him question his being Kira.

Question his own laws.

Strange; because, in life, even with L in his arms (or vice versa), it had been his mere presence that had made Light all the more determined to _be_ Kira.

Drives? Morals? It ran deeper than that.

Who knew? Light was not a quitter, but if L had never become involved in the Kira case at all, the boy might have realized the futility in trying to pull evil out by the roots on his own, or he may have eventually gotten bored playing at god and stopped. L had stepped in to put an end to the killings, but maybe it was his defiance of Kira that had simply made the whole thing a lot worse.

Light suddenly had a target, an adversary, someone who had risen up and directly challenged him, raising the bar. With such a blatant and tantalizing turn of events, it was impossible for him to back down from that point, even if he wanted to. For the price of Lind L. Tailor's life, he had had vowed not to stop until L was no more – a punishment for one so arrogant as to think he could stand against the new world's god and _live_.

But now L… _again_ L, always, _always L…_

Yes, always L.

Light had been a bored young individual. He'd been bored because his schoolwork hadn't challenged his intellect, his "friends" had been flighty-headed morons obsessed with far-fetched anime and comic books, girls had only flocked around him because of the way he looked, and his everyday routine had been humdrum and unchanging. That was why he'd become Kira. That was why the interference of L, the best detective in the whole world, had excited him as opposed to frightening him.

Quite simply, _L_ had eased his boredom from the get-go.

"I don't know why I love you," he'd said to L.

It wasn't true. He _did_ know why he loved L – he'd loved him for the same reason L had grown to love him back. It was because L was the only person he'd ever connected with properly; and truly, it _was_ as though it had been a connection, a physical rewiring. Meeting L was like crossing wires, joining cables that had previously been smoking in irritation, unable to complete the circuit, and sending a sudden, never-felt-before Full Power surge coursing throughout Light, making colors that once been washed-out and monochrome brighten into a gleaming primsacolor gems, illuminating this new world in which he found himself—

This world of murder and detectives and notebooks.

_(In which he murdered a detective using a notebook.) _

The connection hadn't been enough to allow him to spare L – they had always been enemies. Even whilst friends and lovers they'd still been enemies. It was the greatest constant between them, something they both silently acknowledged. L would have let him die, Light knew that – if only he'd confessed, L would have had him executed. They had loved each other but, in the end, the determining factor, the final word, had never been love.

It had been Light _or_ L – never Light _and_ L.

Their relationship had never been _about_ them. It was just circumstance, a perfect connection in an imperfect situation. They were merely the pioneers of a war, not the war itself – but brought together _by_ that war.

A war for the sake of mankind.

L could make him question his being Kira, perhaps; but he was only questioning it in response to both L's pain and his own. It was his being Kira that forced itself between them like a barrier – it was his being Kira that made them both suffer like this. The role he had taken upon himself was the frame of reference, chronicling their pain as he refused to let go of it.

Yet his being Kira at all was not about them, or _for_ them.

It was, or so Light Yagami believed, for the sake of mankind.

_(And so, Kira, why do you exist?_

…_To save them from evil.)_

—

The sheets were stained with the scent of their lovemaking.

Naked beneath his blue robe, having come from the bath, Light sat on the edge of the bed and one-handedly rubbed his hair dry with a towel.

The fingers of his left hand trailed over the sheets wistfully, skipping over every wrinkle in the fabric, remembering how last night these same bedclothes had twisted beneath them and then, when it was done, how they had settled over them intertwined, like a skin to preserve the moment and protect them from the rest of the world.

Needless to say, Light was preparing to get into bed alone tonight.

He let the towel drop to the bedroom floor, his auburn hair hanging in damp and disheveled spikes across his face as he ran both hands over the sheets. It was a slow probing caress, almost like a test, as though willing them to rumple themselves beneath panting entranced bodies, searching to find any of the residual warmth still in them. It wasn't, the sheets were cool and unruffled, almost sanitary, except for when he sank onto the bed and buried his face in the fabric. He could smell the pleasant musky perfume he and L had created, smell the sex, smell the _life_, and it simultaneously reminded him of every other night he'd ever spent with L and of the time after L's death, before the room – _this_ room – had been cleared out, when he had curled up alone on the bed – _this_ bed – and breathed in the lingering scent of something that was now just a memory.

—It didn't _have_ to be just a memory. He could summon Ryuk, bargain with apples for hearts, awaken Snow White or Sleeping Beauty from the dead… The insatiable gears in his mind began to turn against his will, playing out the scenario so perfectly that it was only a sharp reprimand of what he couldn't have, and yet, he did nothing to prevent himself from falling into the wishful, deceitful, beautiful dream. L's memories were selective at best when restored to life, Light would be able to convince him that it was _his_ turn tonight – wouldn't that have been a more desirable state of affairs than lying here alone? To sink his hands into that black-as-ebony hair and shower that white-as-snow skin with bites and kisses and see his _own_ beauty reflected in those mirror-mirror eyes…?

If, by L Lawliet's own words, both one who takes life and one who gives life were as monstrous as each other, then what of one who could do _both_? What of a man who could both give and ruin a heart?

_Am I still a monster, L; or the fairest one of all…?_

Still, it was nothing but hypothesis. Just because he could breathe life back into a dead man didn't mean he should or would.

He knew he shouldn't; and so, no matter the temptation, he wouldn't. He knew nothing of the pain it caused L to go from dead to living to dead again, but for even the apathetic Ryuk to label it "agony", he knew it must be the highest caliber of torture, whatever it entailed on L's part.

Maybe Light Yagami was not one for usually putting others before himself, but this…

He couldn't do it again. The lifeless desperation that had been beseechingly transparent in L's voice this morning, in requesting that Light not revive him again – L had never begged _anything_ of him so sincerely.

…Which left him at _this_. Simply lying here, chasing after the last lingering fragments of a mirror now shattered; the final wisps of a once upon a dream now lost. The memories floated past him like flimsy ghosts, too insubstantial to grab hold of, yet too mesmerizing to ignore. If he could not requite his love for and with L, then he was left with merely the tattoo of it etched into these bedsheets – that, and the knowledge that the struggle of their relationship was as futile as it had ever been.

From their very first kiss, given by Light to L out of sheer spite, it had simply been a painful, fruitless quest for a happy ever after they were never going to have. For every moment of true happiness they'd shared, they'd paid the price in suffering, punishment for believing they had the _right_ to…

And yet, despite that domineering truth, Light couldn't help but indulge in what he couldn't have, he couldn't stop the memories of L's flushed face, his sweat glossed form writhing under him in complete ecstasy. The feeling of being filled with his throbbing heat, the sharp pain that countered the pleasure to make it all the more intense…

Before Light even realized where such thoughts would lead, especially while lying in that particular bed, and breathing in those particular scents, it was already too late. Suddenly he was pulled from his daydream by the carnal heat that was now unsheathing itself between his legs. He sat up, hunching over his lap so that the bulge wasn't noticeable through his robe.

He was mortified by how quickly it had arisen within him, how easily it slipped past his usually tight control over his body. He could lie with a straight face, and kill without breaking a sweat, but the single thought of a passionate L, even without any physical stimulation, could send his libido into a frenzy and override his restraint, dismissing it in a wave of hormones.

He sat there, angry at himself for indulging too far, and afraid that L himself would choose this very embarrassing moment to walk in uninvited. Light grimaced; he could only _imagine_ the ways L could torment him if he realized his arousal, since he was the cause of it to begin with…

He gave a frustrated sigh, clenched his fists and willed it to go away. But after a second of concentration, he knew it was past the point of no return. He would either have to wait a long while for it to take care of itself, L's old method, or he could jerk off and remove it quickly, as well as clear out the hazy sexual thoughts that were now permeating his mind.

He weighed the options for a few seconds, battling out the pros and cons, while his arousal battled against his robe, and eventually decided that a complete physical catharsis was the only way he was going to be able to go to sleep in the bed that was still stained with their unique flavor. If he didn't take care of it now, it would keep him up all night. It was a completely logical decision. Or so he told himself, despite the delicious satisfaction he felt from simply giving into his simplistic male desires.

He glanced furtively around the room, checking for a stray Shinigami, before quietly lifting the robe to reveal the source of his problems. He scowled at his erection, despising the needy pulses it was sending through him, but after a moment, the glare faded and he let himself drift back into the images that had started it.

L was beneath him, mouth open, legs spread, taking him in like it was the only thing he was truly meant for. He wasn't a detective trying to convict him, nor was he a reincarnation trying to hate him; he was only a physical being, completely caught in a web of pleasure, tangled in it as helplessly as Light was. He continued thrusting into him, and the only thing L could say was his name; not Kira, no -kun in sight, just Light, over and over again as if begging for a way out of their darkness.

And there was no Ryuk, or little brothers, or Death Note, only the soft keening sounds that were spilling from his lips as Light continued to move inside him, only the jerk of the mattress as it took their combined weight, only the slow swell of desire that twisted inside him, building pressure until L arched, and the delicious tension imploded in on him and rushed out in a burning blinding streak…

And there was no L. Only dripping hands that began to shake and curl in on themselves.

Those old fairytales might have taught that true love conquered all – that love's kiss could awaken the dead – but it not saved _them_ from evil.

Light knelt forward wearily, wanting to bury his face in his hands, but unable to because of the warm liquid now covering them, undeniable evidence of his weakness. He was tired and dejected, with the beginnings of a headache at his temples – and, to crown it all, his eyes were hurting. Damn that Ryuk, the lying bastard – it was _not_ like putting in a pair of contact lens…

He wished he hadn't traded for them – half of his damned life for them to sting and water like this? They were getting blurry with unshed tears, completely useless. He wouldn't have traded at all if not for the desperate need to get rid of Mello and Near. With the way things went last time, half a life-span might be _longer_ than the time he would have left if he allowed Mello and Near to run about and screw up his plans…

That was his only consolation as a stray droplet actually streaked down his cheek.

He shook his head, shaking it away, and began to clean himself up, wiping his hands on the robe, and pushing his damp hair back.

He pulled on his underwear, slipped out of his robe and got into bed, all in mechanical thoughtless routine. He huddled up under the sheets and closed his aching eyes. He reached over drowsily to turn off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

It was around twenty minutes later when the bedroom door slowly creaked open, allowing a growing slab of lamplight to cover the floor; it was enough to rouse Light from his state of almost-slumber, but not awaken him completely. He was slightly aware, but still not compelled enough to do anything about it.

He did, however, bolt awake when he felt the mattress shift; felt the sheets move with the evidence of someone sliding in next to him.

Someone colder and crueler than Ryuk.

Someone who delightedly ran a thin icy finger up his spine; making him jerk away from the shivery touch and sit upright in bed, hand flying out towards the lamp.

L smirked at him in the gold illumination the bedside lamp cast across the room; peeking out at Light from beneath the covers like a child in a makeshift den.

"You're not funny," Light hissed, edging away from him even so. "Get out."

"Hm?" L cocked his head. "That's strange, you practically _dragged_ me in here last night—"

"That was _different_!" Light exhaled deeply. "_You_ were different…"

"How fickle Light-kun is, to like me one day and not like me the next," L mused, sitting up and letting the covers slide off over his head. "It's very strange – but perhaps I would think it stranger still had I not witnessed this in Light-kun before."

"Is that so?" Light bit out.

"Of course." L blinked. "That day when Higuchi died… do you think I didn't _notice_ that you had changed…? I couldn't say _how_ exactly you had changed, of course, it was an alteration that was completely internal and invisible, something unrecognizable – at least, at the time. I know now, of course, that your touching of the Death Note had forced all of your memories back into you. How else to explain your sudden murderous intent?"

Light rubbed at his throbbing forehead in despair.

"Why are you in here?" He asked quietly, closing his eyes.

"I've come to gouge your eyes out, Light-kun."

Light's head jerked up again, the wide amber eyes in question snapping open to stare at L.

In the dumbfounded silence that followed, L tilted his head and smiled.

"Do you think I'm joking?" He leaned up towards the alarmed boy, who shrank back against the headboard. "…Why _would_ I be? I know why you swapped half of your life for them – so you can kill my heirs. Why would I be joking, Light-kun?"

Light took a frightened little breath, his head suddenly spinning with queasy vertigo as L averted his gaze to the ceiling.

"Of course, I have to say, I'm actually a little offended," he mused. "You tricked Rem into killing me – you claim to love me, yet I was not even worth half your life. But for my heirs…"

"Do you think I _wanted_ to give away half of my life to _Ryuk_?!" Light snapped.

"Then why did you? Really, Light-kun, I think you're old enough now to realize that there is no call to do something if it is not to your liking…"

"I can't _believe_ you're asking me that…"

"I simply find it ridiculous, Light-kun. Trading half of your life for a killing tool you don't even want? Or… well, perhaps this is simply wishful thinking on my part, but might I presume that you didn't particularly want to kill me?"

"You can't just go around doing the things you want to and ignoring the things that you don't!" Light blazed, letting anger override the panic he had first felt. "Don't be an idiot, you _know_ that…!"

"I do?"

"Of course." Light looked away from him. "…Well… would _you_ have wanted to send me to be executed, if you'd managed to prove that I was Kira?"

"Not really."

"But you would have anyway?"

"…I suppose so."

"Well, there you are, then."

"But that's different, Light-kun."

"How is it?" Light hissed. "Because Kira is wrong and bad and whatever?"

"No, nothing like that. It's just that…" L looked up at Light, his eyes utterly lifeless. "…Your death wouldn't have cost me half of my life."

Light's eyes narrowed.

"Just as yours didn't cost me half of mine, L."

L was silent for a long while, looking at the bedsheets.

"Regardless," he said at length, reverting back to their original topic, "perhaps it is best that I take out your eyes, Light-kun – the welfare of my 'little brothers' aside."

When Light gave no answer to this, L leaned up towards him, placing a hand against the wall on either side of Light's head; inclining into him, effectively trapping the younger man between himself and the headboard of the bed, and stopping only when their faces were centimeters apart.

"Your eyes, you see," the dead detective whispered, "…are treacherous to you. They have betrayed you many times. It's for the best, you see, if I take them from you. Then you _won't_ see, but… it'll be better for you. They cannot betray you then."

"_Betray_… me?" Light gasped out, breathless with fear at L's proximity, the detached malice in his voice, the chill which sapped his strength, the deadness of his eyes, a blank blackness yawning at him like the lips of a grave.

L gave a serious nod.

"Why did I presume that it was only that you had forgotten you were Kira, not that you had never been Kira to begin with…? _Your eyes_, Light-kun. When you were in confinement, there was something – a turning point at which, I distinctly recall, you said of your pride, "I'll have to _get rid of it_". And in the moments which followed that statement, your eyes changed. That was why, no matter your sincerity in denying that you were ever Kira, I could never believe you. The truth is, you were not lying to me, because you yourself believed that you were telling the truth, but just because _you_ were not lying personally never meant that the statement "Light Yagami is Kira" wasn't true in itself. Your eyes told me that you were innocent, but they had also told me that you were guilty. Do you understand?"

"That hardly matters now," Light spat, now reaching up to try and push L away. He couldn't breathe properly when he was so close, as if he turned the air itself frigid and lifeless.

"I beg to differ. That wasn't all of it, Light-kun. The day your memories were returned to you, your eyes changed once again. How can you have thought that I hadn't noticed? The eyes that believed in your own innocence were the ones I had come to know intimately – and then, after Higuchi's death, they had vanished completely. It was nothing to do with my intelligence, Light-kun, or my deductive capability, or even my suspicion of you. It was simply that your eyes had changed. I could _see_ it."

"And you think that's a good excuse to claw them out, do you?" Light bit out.

"I am merely trying to save you from your own folly, Light-kun. You should never have traded."

"Well, I did, and I'm keeping them." Light shoved hard at L, ignoring the way the coldness pushed back just as hard, sending tendrils of ice into his arm and settling in his bone. "Now get off."

"Keeping them?" L echoed, not budging. "No, I cannot allow that…"

Still trapping Light, L lashed out with one hand, grasping a handful of Light's hair; twisting it in his grip and forcing his head back so that he couldn't pull it away.

Panicking, Light thrashed about underneath him, wrenching at L's wrist in an attempt to break free from his grip; L had very thin bones, he could probably snap his wrist if he pulled hard enough at the angle they currently were in—

"Don't do that, Light-kun," L said calmly, his other hand nearing Light's face. "I'm just going to end up tearing out your hair if you keep pulling."

"Better my hair… than my… _eyes_!" Light panted desperately. "Damn it, L… _stop_ it—!"

But his free hand was already poised, hovering over his face with his fingers held in a talon-like position, as if he was going to pluck them out like they were grapes off a vine.

A painful jerk of his head prevented L from sinking his claw-like fingers into his right eye, and instead, the nails tore across his cheek, raising painful red welts. Desperately Light swung his elbow around, solidly hitting the far side of L's wrist. The hard point of his elbow landed squarely in the dip of the joint, and he felt bone give under the pressure and eventually buckle in on itself since L still hadn't released his grip on Light's hair.

The moment of collapse was accompanied by an audible _snap_. The sound made Light's stomach twist into queasy knots, and he winced despite himself; he hadn't meant to _break _it…

L didn't even blink.

The rupture did however, allow Light to yank his head free, the tendons and muscles in L's hand becoming unresponsive despite the fact that he hadn't felt any pain; but the younger man was still trapped between his assailant and the bed, his cheek slowly oozing blood.

His wrist having been snapped had little effect on L's mission to relieve Light of his eyes; his undamaged hand instead coming straight at Light's face—

"_Don't_!" Light screeched, flinching.

…And the blow never came.

Light dared to open his eyes, finding L's white icy fingers a few centimeters from his left eye – but frozen there, unmoving. He looked up at L, who blinked once or twice, and then withdrew his hand, suddenly very calm.

"Yes, of course," he muttered, more to himself. "I… sometimes forget myself…"

He got off Light wordlessly, standing up beside the bed; his left hand swaying haphazardly from the broken wrist. He lifted his arm to examine the joint, the snapped bone jutting at a grotesque angle against his paper-like skin. He stretched out his arm, flexed it and then drew his good hand across the limb as though putting on a stubborn glove. The bone slid back into place, seemingly repairing itself.

Sickened, Light watched him in speechless horror.

"I won't take your eyes, Light-kun," L said softly. "You have my word on that. It… is not my place to, and you made a fair deal for them…"

He trailed away towards the bedroom door, having lost all his fervor, suddenly smaller and just as monochrome as he always was. Light watching him wordlessly – stunned into silence by both L's announcing that he was going to blind him and then his sudden unexplained one-eighty in regards to the plan. He knew it couldn't have been because of his wrist, not with how casually he had just fixed it…

"Don't you think it's ironic, though?" L mused, stopping to look back at Light as he opened the door.

"What is…?" Light asked softly, his voice almost failing him.

"Well, that last night there was nothing but love between us, and now I would terrorize you like this? And, well…" L gave an offish shrug. "…If only you'd given me another heart tonight, you would have nothing to fear from me, for I would have no knowledge of either your being Kira nor of your eyes, and thus would have no reason to attempt to damage you so."

"B-but _you're_ the one who begged me not to revive you again!" Light cried in despair. "Ryuk said it was agony for you…! I… didn't want to make you suffer again…"

"Yes." L smirked. "…Isn't that ironic, Light?"

He departed, leaving Light alone, shallowly gasping in fright, trying to force the frigid air from his lungs and the permafrost from his muscles. He still had them, still had the eyes he'd given half his life for, the eyes for which he might have had to pay _more_ than even that…

…What had L been trying to blind him to? His _own_ evil…

…Or the ability to see L's?

* * *

"I'll go by myself," Matt said decisively, throwing his chin out and snapping his goggles on to adjust them over his eyes.

"That's probably best," Mello agreed, watching quietly. "We don't want to be attracting too much attention."

"…Given that it's abandoned, you mean."

"Right." Mello took up a red marker and drew a quick, uneven circle around the previously-highlighted spot on the map spread over the desk of their Tokyo hotel room. "Locked up and left desolate by the Japanese Kira taskforce on the fourteenth of November, 2004 – nine days after the deaths of L and Watari. It won't necessarily lead us right to Light Yagami, but it's a good place to start."

"Thankyou, all-night internet research." Matt cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck, popping the vertebrae there as well as though to make a point.

"I'm not going to praise you for simply doing your job, Matt," Mello snapped in reply, completely ignoring the grin now plastered across Matt's face.

"Meanie." Matt headed for the door. "Well, we're not getting any younger here…"

He snatched up Mello's dark leather jacket that was slung over a chair as he left the room, pulling it on; and was ignoring 'No Smoking' signs as he languidly crossed the hotel lobby by the time Mello realized he'd made off with it.

—

Matt spat the cashed remains of his third cigarette to the pavement, looking up at the grey mirrored building stretching towards the night sky, cutting out the stars as effectively as the light pollution surrounding it.

It had been Mello's idea to come at night, when the streets were all but deserted; and his own idea to break in from the back rather than the front. The place might have been locked down and abandoned by the Kira task force in the aftermath of L's death, but Matt didn't expect to just be able to stroll right in. There were probably still security measures in place – perhaps alarms or camera feeds.

Of course, that was precisely why _Matt_ had come to do the breaking in.

As it turned out, there _was_ a security grid in place – Matt hacked into it and overrode it with ease, the glass doors sliding gracefully apart to grant him entrance.

Okay, he was past the first hurdle and in. Matt reached into one of the large pockets in his cargo pants and fished out a small black electronic device, flipping it on as he glanced around the dusty room.

A lobby, he imagined; very long, thick with dust and grime. At the end furthest from him, close to the front entrance, was a staircase leading up to the floor above; odd architecture, twisted into a helical spiral like that in a fairytale castle…

Matt crossed the lobby, pausing at the foot of the staircase to look down at the screen of the device he'd brought along.

He blinked at it; then pulled his goggles up to his forehead so that he could look at the screen properly. The gadget was a simple one, designed to pick up electronic wavelengths and frequencies within a radius of around a hundred meters or so and pinpoint their location so that he could track them down. He'd brought it with him to help him navigate towards any online security measures so that he could disable them without first setting them off, but this…

There was a frequency value flashing on the screen, located at being about fourteen meters above him, and it simply wasn't right to be that of a security code-lock or an alarm system. It wasn't even _close_ to what it should have been, it was more like the reading of…

…a computer.

_A computer?_ What would a working, online computer be doing in a building that had been without residents for over three years? Even if someone had accidentally left it on when the place was locked down, there was no way it would still be running now – the modem would have completely burned itself out years ago…

Fourteen meters. He calculated that as being about two floors up and, frowning again at the device screen, started up the staircase. He found the culprit on the second floor, as he'd predicted; it was across the room from him as he entered, but he paused to look around the area before he crossed to it, baffled.

_This room was clean. _

Devoid of the three years' worth of dust and grime he'd witnessed on his way up here – there wasn't even a speck of dust on the glass coffee table sitting between two sofas, and the lights and ceiling were free of cobwebs. Blinking, Matt cautiously crossed the room to the computer mainframe; a long desk with a row of chairs and computers, although only one of them was on, blinking quietly in a locked sleep mode. Above the desk was a large network of screens, apparently in standby mode, all dependent on the single operating computer.

What the hell was going on here? Was the place abandoned or not?…

Well, the reading was leading him right to this computer; and Matt fingered the slim revolver nestled in his pocket, reassuring himself before closing the distance in order to check it out. Matt leaned over the deviant computer, brushing a few fronds of fiery hair from his face. It too was in standby mode, although a tap of the _Enter_ key booted it back up and illuminated the room with the glow of a welcome screen that demanded three passwords and a security code.

Matt frowned at it. He couldn't hack this computer right here, without any equipment – he'd need to get into the system from his own computer. He pulled out his phone, making a note of the mainframe number as a Contact and storing it safely for future use. He pocketed both the phone and the frequency pinpointer, leaving the room and finding himself in a corridor with a flight of stairs going upwards and an elevator. He was apparently back in the Land of Dust and Dirt, but the cleanness of that last room – some kind of office, by the looks of it – had piqued his curiosity.

Why was it clean? Why was a computer working and online? Logically, there was only one answer:

There was someone here.

Perhaps the police? Maybe another Kira investigation group he and Mello had no idea about?

…_Near_?

Matt ascended three sets of stairs, finally finding himself in another corridor, at the end of which was a single door; drawn towards it, he tried the handle, half-expecting it to be locked.

It wasn't.

The door swung inwards, hinges creaking a little in the deathly silence of the whole building; he was all nerves, and it sounded like the rumbling of thunder. Matt paused, and then took a breath, actually pulling his gun out, before entering the dark room beyond. He couldn't shake the beginnings of a small shiver crawling at the base of his spine, apprehension scuttling across his skin – there was something a little strange about this place, a little creepy.

It almost felt… _haunted_.

Well, perhaps that was to be expected – after all, L and Watari _had_ died within these walls. But still, Matt couldn't help but shake the feeling, the creeping third person déjà vu that made his hair stand on end and his eyes dilate in fear, even as he felt about for a light switch, that he was being…

…watched.

—

Ryuk was very entertained by this human; younger than Light, maybe very late teens, with dark red hair, green-tinted goggles perched above his forehead and strange clothes. Well, they seemed strange to Ryuk, who was more used to Light's immaculate, fitted attire, Misa's lace and things dangling off her in all directions, and the detective, who, frankly, didn't look all that much worse for being a walking corpse due to his continuous sporting of the "pulled-it-unironed-out-of-the-laundry-basket" look.

So Ryuk had never seen anyone who looked like this boy before, in his odd baggy trousers with too many pockets, a fitted leather jacket and a black-and-white striped top that reminded the Shinigami of a movie he'd once seen Light watching, called _Beetlejuice._

Needless to say, Ryuk had been floating after him throughout his entire ascent through the "abandoned" headquarters building, and now, as Matt entered the area Light inhabited, he started to cackle gleefully, laughter boiling up and spilling over in malicious giggles.

Having a mercenary approach to all this was far more fun – to fly ahead and warn Light about his visitor would spoil everything…

He hovered unseen behind Matt like a cloud of grinning smog as he looked around the living room, apparently astonished all over again by the cleanliness of every surface and item in the area. Lucky for Light that he hadn't carelessly left any Death Notes or stolen hearts lying around…

Matt left the living area and went through into the kitchen, frowning around again at the way everything gleamed, eventually approaching the paper bag on the sideboard, apparently to inspect it. Ryuk flew after him indignantly—

"Hey, those are mine!" The Shinigami snapped – unheard, of course – as Matt lifted an apple out by the stalk, frowning at it as it glowed ruby under the neon kitchen lighting.

Ryuk flailed comically, eyes bulging with possessiveness that flared out beyond their sockets, but he did however, resist the strong urge to snatch the fruit away from him; the boy seemed quite a bit on edge anyway and he didn't want to frighten him off just yet…

Matt gently put the apple down again and went through the kitchen into the corridor leading to both the bathroom and the bedroom, Ryuk soaring through the wall after him, amber eyes gleaming like cursed jewels. He followed him as he wandered into the bathroom, delighting in the soft gasp the boy gave on seeing a mirror at each wall, cracked to offer not a single picture, but a thousand in each.

Matt slowly approached the closest mirror, seeing each of his thousand miniature, distorted reflections come nearer to him.

He could not see the thousand miniature, distorted Ryuks behind him, giggling gleefully at each of his actions.

"Bedroom next, bedroom next," Ryuk whispered loudly, capering behind Matt like a court jester desperate for a single laugh. "Come to rescue Sleeping Beauty, Prince Charming? Well, he's not in here…! You have to go to the _bedroom_!"

Matt actually froze up, blinking at the mirror – and Ryuk froze too, grin sliding off his face. Had been heard? Seen, perhaps?

No, that was impossible, he'd have to have touched the Death Note Ryuk was attached to, and since the Shinigami had been watching him the whole time since he'd entered the building and hadn't seen him do just that, he knew that couldn't be the case.

But it still gave him the creeps to be stared at by a human who couldn't actually see him.

Matt glanced behind him, nostrils flaring, and pulse racing, as he look around the bathroom; straight _through_ Ryuk, who waved at him experimentally.

Nothing. The boy only gave a small shake of his head, took in a steady breath, and left the bathroom, footsteps quiet on carpet.

Ryuk bobbed after him like a macabre carnival balloon, hanging back a bit as he watched Matt try the door handle to the last room – the bedroom. The door opened silently, and as Matt stepped in, Ryuk started to follow him again—

Only to have his path blocked by L, who gazed at him impassively.

"There's a human wandering around in here," Ryuk snickered, pointing over L's shoulder.

"I know." L's dark, lifeless eyes narrowed. "I want you to stop following him."

Ryuk looked like he was about to argue, gazing longingly over L's shoulder to see what was happening inside the room. But after moment he deflated, shrugged, and skulked off.

"Whatever," he muttered. "…Though, for the record, you were more fun when you were alive."

—

This room – the bedroom – was illuminated by a lamp. Matt paused to take a look around, but his attention was immediately grabbed in a chokehold by the _slim, plain black notebook_ sitting on the desk.

Matt went to the desk as though pulled there by a magnet; he'd only ever seen the Death Note in grainy photographs contained in police reports he'd hacked into. But it had looked something like this – thin, black, although…

He could have sworn that the one he'd seen in photographs had had the words 'Death Note' written on the cover in shaky, white English capitals. He picked this notebook up, turning it over. There was no writing on either side.

However, when he flipped through it, he came across page after page thick with neat kanji – names of criminals, condemned to die by Kira.

It _was_ a Death Note. Maybe not the Death Note he'd seen – but then again, that made sense. The Death Note he'd seen had been in police custody, hence the police pictures of it. Was it possible that there was another notebook? It must be true, if the killings had continued after the incarceration of the notebook taken from Kyosuke Higuchi by L.

Maybe there were even more than _two_ notebooks. Who knew how many there were on Earth?

…Well, if that was the case, then Kira wouldn't miss this one. Matt quietly rolled the notebook up and slipped it into one of the larger pockets of his pants, buttoning the popper to keep it safe.

_You're __**here**__ then, Kira – or, should I say, Light Yagami…?_

Matt turned to face the rest of the bedroom; and had to use every fiber of self control to clamp down on the scream that lodged itself in his throat. The shock was so great he nearly _fainted_ when he realized that he'd completely overlooked the figure asleep in the bed, barely more than a meter or two away from him. He stilled in silence, waiting for the body to roll over, for the eyes to fix on him and pin him; but after a long moment, long enough for the cold sweat to break out across his skin, he knew that he must not have wakened the person, and he imperceptibly relaxed.

Apparently his barging in here and thieving a killer notebook hadn't awoken Sleeping Beauty…

Matt silently approached the bed, his heart pounding audibly in the quiet of the room; and there he found, fast asleep on his back, the object of their chase after all.

Light Yagami.

He was grateful to have not awoken him, although puzzled; it seemed as though he truly was beneath some kind of spellbound sleep, dead to the world.

Matt rubbed at his forehead wearily. _Now_ what was he supposed to do? He'd found Kira, asleep and defenseless, and also found physical _proof_ that he was Kira in the form of the Death Note he'd found on his desk, but… he couldn't arrest him, exactly. He had nothing to restrain him with, no means to cart him back to his and Mello's hotel room and no police support. He supposed he could just _call_ the police but then Mello would absolutely hit the _roof_, no doubt about that…

"He's beautiful, isn't he?"

Matt froze at the sound of a voice – speaking English – coming from behind him; he didn't move, waiting for the barrel of a gun to jab him in the spine.

Nothing of the like came; and here L chose to step up beside Matt, joining him in overlooking the sleeping Light.

"If you're wondering why he hasn't woken up," L went on softly, "it's because he's taken sleeping pills. I confess to having terrorized him a little bit earlier and he couldn't sleep, and so eventually he drugged himself. A brave thing, with me hanging around." The dead detective tilted his head a little. "…Although it's also ironic, for him to be taking sleeping pills…"

He eventually turned his head towards Matt, who was staring at him, eyes wide with intermingled horror and wonder.

"Hello, Matt," he said. "It's been far too long. How are you?"

Matt opened his mouth, but neither words nor a scream came out; his voice merely shriveled in on itself as he looked at L.

L gave an understanding nod.

"I expected this kind of reaction." He nodded towards the door. "Do you mind if we leave the room? I'm not very comfortable about having you around Light, given… well, recent circumstances."

He took Matt by the sleeve of his stolen leather jacket and steadily pulled him from the room anyway, closing the door quietly behind them.

"_You're… alive_?" Matt got out in a strangled whisper as he stumbled into the hall after L. "B-both of you… you and Light Yagami… you're both alive—"

"He is," L interrupted calmly. "I'm not."

Matt blinked at him, helpless confusion swimming behind his eyes.

"You… you _look_ alive…" he said faintly. "Look, you…" He grasped L's hand; then dropped it again, shocked by the coldness.

"Looks are deceiving, Matt," L replied blandly. "You know that. Do I look like a detective? Does Light look like a mass murderer? If it were easy to tell everything about a person merely from their looks, I'd have wrapped up this Kira case myself a long time ago."

"But how can you be _here_ if you're not alive?" Matt cried. "And if you're here, and able to be here, and speak to me like this, then why did you leave us?! We needed you; Mello's never been the same since—"

"Matt, I was _killed_," L interrupted flatly. "It was slightly beyond my control at that point."

"_Then why are you here?!_"

"Again, circumstances beyond my control. _Far_ beyond." L's eyes narrowed at his third heir. "Though I could certainly ask you the same question."

"Mello and I are tracing Kira. We… found an old notebook of yours, a blue one, and you'd written in it… that 'Light Yagami' was Kira, and then we did some research on him and found that he'd apparently been killed two days ago by Misa Amane, alongside you and Watari, but… well, of course we knew you were already dead, so… we thought we'd start here searching for clues…"

Matt trailed off; the explanation had rushed out on a single breath, and died lamely. L wasn't bothered, and gave a small understanding nod.

"Impressive detective work. I'd expect nothing else, of course, but…" He grasped his heir by his elbows. "Matt, I want you to leave. It's dangerous for you to be here."

Matt blinked, still wading through the revelations and unable process the words.

"…What? But…" Matt pulled away, suddenly seeming suspicious. "…He is Kira, isn't he? Light Yagami, I mean?"

"Yes, he is."

"And he killed you."

"Not personally, but the fault lies with him."

"But if you're back now and you _know_ that he's Kira, then… why haven't you _done_ anything, L?! Why are you just letting him get away with this?"

"There's nothing I can do," L snapped. "I had my chance against Kira, and I didn't win. He killed me. I'm powerless against him now."

"That's not—"

"That's why I have you, isn't it?" L leaned in towards Matt, who shrank back from his cold, lifeless eyes. "Isn't that why I chose you?"

"I…" Matt could only stare at him helplessly, rather afraid of him and the overbearing presence that was now pouring off him. "…L, you… you're _different_…"

"Of course I'm different." L backed up from him again, turning away as though highly impatient. "What do you expect from me, Matt? Dying isn't exactly a picnic…"

"L—"

"Don't be so weak." L smacked away the hand that had been reaching for him. "That's exactly what got me killed."

"Well, what do _you_ expect from _me_?!" Matt burst out, frustrated tears beginning to well in his eyes. "How do you think it felt, to have Mello tell me you'd been killed by Kira?! You were everything to us, the person we admired, and then you died…! We hadn't seen you in like a year, we— we didn't even get to say goodbye!" Matt wiped fiercely at his eyes. "And now you've come back to life out of nowhere and you just want me to treat it like it's another piece of data?!"

"Yes, because if you _don't_ treat information as merely that, and suspects as merely suspects, then you end up _dead_," L spat in reply.

"Look, Mello and I know you and Light were… well, that you were… _involved_, but—"

"The notebook," L said quietly in recollection.

"…Yeah," Matt replied softly. "The notebook."

"And you still admire me?" L stepped past him, heading down the corridor. "Even knowing that I… well, I needn't bother going into it." He stepped out of sight into the bathroom.

"Of course." Matt followed him. "You're still _L_."

"And, as L, I had a sexual relationship with Kira."

Matt stepped into the bathroom doorway, faced once again with the thousands of shattered Matts, now intermingled with thousands of shattered Ls.

"I never said it was right," he said softly.

"Of course it wasn't right," L replied, and his every reflection spoke with him.

A painful resonance of the fact that it hadn't been – wasn't – right for him to love Kira.

"But I paid the price for it," he went on softly.

"L, you didn't deserve to be killed, and…" Matt lowered his gaze, hardening it in anger. "…And least of all by someone who said that they loved you."

"It doesn't matter. It's done now."

"If it doesn't matter, then why are you here?" Matt challenged, the anger now tainting his voice as well.

"Because of _him_."

"Well…" Matt looked up again, now resolute. "That's why I'm here too."

"Matt, I cannot allow this." L's voice had grown very cold once more. "I would like you to leave, right now."

"I don't understand you. One minute you're saying that you can't do anything and that's what _we're_ for, and the next you're telling me to leave—"

"Because it's dangerous."

"I know." Matt's tone was equally icy. "We all know. After all… _you_ died, didn't you?"

"Because I had _no-one_ to protect me. Even Watari couldn't save me, but that was my own fault, not his. But you, and Mello, and Near—"

"Do you think you can save us, L?" Matt looked at him hopelessly. "You're too late for that."

"Matt, please…" The cold firmness in L's voice had given out, and he could only look at him wearily. "Just go."

Matt folded his arms, and grounded himself to his spot on the carpet.

"Then you come with me."

"I can't."

Matt puffed up a few extra inches, incredulous.

"Why can't you? Are… are you a ghost? Can't you leave the place where you died?"

"Of course I can."

"Then come with me!"

L shook his head, not looking at the boy.

"No."

Matt scowled; twisting his face in contempt as he suddenly realized a distasteful explanation.

"Are you protecting him?" He snapped. "Light Yagami?"

"No, I'm protecting _you_. Matt, I'm not going to say it again. I want you to go, and I want you to go _now_, understand?"

Matt looked at him for a long time; then finally came to a sulky decision.

"Okay, I'll leave. But make no mistake—"

"No," L said, heading him off; he was no longer looking at him, rather gazing at his own multiple reflections. "Don't come back, either you or Mello. By all means find the evidence to expose Light as Kira, but don't come back. It's too dangerous."

"Do you really expect me to keep that kind of promise?"

"Yes, I do."

Matt had no answer to that; instead he trailed towards the bathroom door in silence.

"Aren't you going to say goodbye?" he asked, pausing in the threshold, glancing across at L, who had his back to him but was watching him in the shattered reflection of the mirror opposite.

"Why would you want me to say that?" L inquired dully by way of reply.

Again, having no answer, Matt gave a sigh and left in defeated silence, L watching a thousand of him trail away.

"You have a wonderful way of sucking the very life out of all the humans you're around," Ryuk observed gleefully, choosing this moment to poke his head through the wall. "…Of course, you were kind of that way when you were alive too."

L ignored him, leaving the bathroom and slipping back into the bedroom to go to the window, watching for Matt to make sure he left.

"Jeez, you're such a drag," Ryuk griped, sliding through the door after him; he glanced over at the bed. "Of course, so is Light. I was sure he'd use his new Shinigami Eyes to kill that guy, but he's too busy playing Sleeping Beauty…"

Light shifted in his sleep, sheets rustling; just as L was satisfied in watching Matt, now a tiny figure, emerge from the building and saunter off down the street, a minute flare of orange in the dark an indication of the cigarette he was lighting up.

"What's the story with you and that guy, anyway?" Ryuk inquired nosily, floating over to the window. "Not cheating on your murderer boyfriend, are you?" He snickered to himself at the thought. "He seems kind of young for you, though I guess you're quite a bit older than Light too—"

"Be quiet," L snapped viciously, the cold authority in his voice freezing the sentence as he turned away from the window. "It's none of your business."

He stopped at the bed again, looking down at Light; still content and still unspeakably beautiful in his slumber.

"You didn't tell that guy – _Mail Jeevas_ – about Light's Shinigami Eyes," Ryuk murmured, his voice suddenly much less playful and far more malicious.

L stiffened; but didn't offer Ryuk his gaze.

"No," he replied emotionlessly, his own eyes on the scratch he'd made on Light's perfect face. "…I can't."

* * *

Mello was frowning down at his cross-referenced notes, dark eyes darting back and forth between pages, when his phone went off, vibrating in silence on the hotel room desk.

He picked it up without checking the caller ID, taking for granted that it would be Matt calling him up to tell him how the break-in had gone.

"Matt?"

"Afraid not," drawled a familiar, blasé voice.

Mello's eyes widened marginally before narrowing to dagger points, fingers tightening on the body of the phone.

"_Near_," he spat.

"I'd prefer N."

"And _I'd_ prefer if you'd quit calling me up like some kind of pizza delivery service!" Mello snapped. "What the fuck do you want now?"

"Are you in Japan?"

"Why the hell do you care?"

"Well, if you don't want to tell me, I can just trace your phone signal," Near replied pleasantly.

Mello bit his lip furiously, fighting the impulse to chuck the phone across the room.

"You already know Matt and I are in Japan," he growled finally.

"I wanted to confirm."

"Well, now you know, so screw off." Mello was about to hang up, but heard Near call his name, suddenly sounding more desperate.

"Mello—!"

"I said screw off," Mello bit out, bringing the phone back up to his ear and savagely brushing back a few spikes of gold hair from his face. "What, do you think I'm a fucking idiot? You only call me when you want something, so don't try and fucking tell me this is an old-times phone call."

"Mello, L didn't intend for this," Near replied flatly. "We're supposed to be fighting against Kira, not each other."

"I can multitask."

"…Look, I'm in Japan too. Can we—"

"What, meet up?" Mello mocked, cutting him off. "What the hell is wrong with you? I'm sorry, _N_, but I find this a little bit suspicious."

"Is that so?" Near's voice was toneless. "But I'm not the one who stormed out of Wammy's House. I wouldn't have minded working with you, Mello. It's _you_ that had the problem."

"And that problem still stands," Mello hissed. "I'm working with Matt, not you, so stop calling me. You're not using either of us as pawns."

"I'm just thinking about what L would have wanted."

"Well, L's dead, so fuck off." Mello hung up on him and angrily tossed the phone down onto the desk, seething.

He was still in a filthy mood when Matt let himself back into the room, shrugging off the jacket; the redhead was silent, and although Mello wasn't talking himself, angrily banging about making black coffee, he did shoot a puzzled glance at him.

"What?" He asked eventually, his tone clipped as he brought Matt over his coffee; the redhead had flopped into a chair at the desk, pulling off his goggles. "What's the matter? Didn't you find anything?"

Matt glanced up at him dully.

"You're in a bad mood," he observed.

"Never mind about me," Mello snapped, putting his own coffee down on the desk; right now he was so pissed off at Near he couldn't even bring himself to bitch about it to Matt. Bringing up L like that, using him as a weapon, the little fucker…

"Come here," was all Matt said, reaching out and pulling Mello towards him by his waist onto his lap.

"What?" Mello blinked down at him as he wrapped his arms around the blonde's waist.

"Nothing." Matt rested his head against Mello's chest in silence for a while, breathing in the familiar scent and letting the warmth soothe his jangled nerves.

"Did you find anything?" Mello asked again, resting his cheek on the crown of Matt's head; calmed down by his touch.

"Yeah," Matt breathed. "I found plenty."

Mello lifted his head again.

"Like what?"

"Like this." Matt retrieved the Death Note tucked snugly into his pocket, pressing it into Mello's hands.

"Matt… is this…?"

"Yeah." Matt hugged him tighter; but Mello hit him over the head with the Death Note.

"Then what are you all moody about?" He asked incredulously, his grin wide and wicked. "This is brilliant!"

"Yeah, I know… it's just…"

"Just _what_?" Mello asked suspiciously.

"It's… well, it's…" Matt took a breath. "…It's _L_."

"L?" Mello repeated, color draining out of his face. "…What about L?"

"I… just saw him…"

"What? Where? _How_?" And when Matt fell silent again, Mello grasped him by his shoulders and shook him roughly. "Matt, answer me! How can you have seen L? He's _dead_!"

"No, he isn't." Matt finally looked up, his eyes meeting Mello's. "Not anymore."

* * *

He'd dreamt of a pale boy; small, fragile, with pastel skin and snow-white hair and large, dark, mirror-mirror eyes.

L's eyes.

But the vision had not been projected on the usual hazy dream-like film; the wraithlike boy curled on the floor of a warehouse building, manipulating tiny toy figures like chess pawns, L's eyes gleaming with the cold malice Light remembered all too well.

_Remembered…_

He knew, upon waking, that it had not been a dream itself; but a memory embedded within a dream.

A memory that had come back to him, unbidden.

_The memory of Near's face._

Still, a memory within a dream was not enough for his Shinigami Eyes; he still knew nothing of Near's true name.

His eyes still stung, but he ignored the pain in them, relieved that he still had them at all. The scratch on his cheek, just beneath the right eye, was enough to remind him of the price he'd almost paid for them. He cleaned the dried blood from his face with a wet towel and went back to the bedroom, shaking his aching head. Sleeping pills always did a number on him the morning after…

L was curled up on the bed; Light eyed him warily, keeping a wide circumference as he headed towards the wardrobe. He didn't trust him not to make a sudden lunge for him, promise or no about his eyes; although, granted, L seemed to have lapsed back into his depressed fit from yesterday.

He did blink up at Light though, those eyes the same as those which had gazed at him so judiciously within the memory encased within his dream—

Just without the mirror-mirror part that Light had simultaneously loved and been afraid of.

"He has your eyes," he said simply; just to get a reaction out of L, really.

"Near, you mean," L responded.

Light faltered in opening the wardrobe; he hadn't expected L to just come right out with it like that.

"You're still here," he said, turning away to pull out some clothes and changing the subject as he did so.

L took much longer answering this; though it hadn't been a question, and Light hadn't really wanted a response either way. Eventually the dead detective spoke, his voice suddenly echoing with a strange, melancholic defeat:

"…Of course I'm still here, Light-kun."

* * *

To all who enjoyed the Light-jerking-off scene, thank Narroch, not me. It was another case of my usual going-to-write-it-but-not-bothering, followed by another case of Narroch's usual rolling-her-eyes-and-writing-it-in-herself.

So:

-Mello and Matt have a Death Note and know of L's (re)existence.

-Light is clueless of both of these instances but is rather more preoccupied with being relieved that he isn't blind.

-L is as cryptic (and creepy) as ever.

-Ryuk is amused.

-Near has no friends.

Har har har.

_Poison Apple_ is beginning to draw towards the conclusion, but a lot still has to happen, so…

Make sure you keep reading!!111!!1!

RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx


	26. Shattered Symphony

**Narroch: **It's been a while... I do believe this is the longest we have ever waited before releasing chapters...? O.o We just needed a bit of a hiatus, life happens and such. Also, we wanted to wait for this special date!

**RobinRocks: **Nyes, indeed! As I am sure many of you know, today – 24th August – is Near's birthday. :) Let's see, he was born in 1991, same year as my brother, and my brother is 17, so that makes Near, as of today, 17 too. Aww, bless. And best of all, Near is actually _in_ this chapter (he wasn't in the last one, I don't think…)! Aww, I love him – he's _soooooooo_ cute (just kind of evil…)!

**Narroch: **I don't understand Near haters... I really don't. He is just trying his best, like a lil gimp train engine that thought it could. Happy birthday gimp. (I am in SUCH a mood right now, it is quite fantastic to watch :P)

**RobinRocks: **What kind of mood, dear? Bad mood, happy mood, odd mood…? O.o

Anyway, BIG thanks to: **Lostpharoah, blondevil, Scripta Lexicona, CheeseFaerieXXL, Tobi Tortue, Tikaani, BakayaroManiac, anja-chan, Nardaviel, Candy Apple Heart Attack, PhoebeGilmore, Synonymous Brian, WhiteWolfCub, Cween Almond, MiaoShou, Yaro, Gtimes3, TheQueenOfMediocrity, Perdue, NightPredator, Mask of Mirage, OneWhoSitsWithTheTurtles, Kaze Kimizu, Skyhe, recipe for insanity, MeEksiNs, Deus3xMachina, Bobertha, shad0wform, Nyx-Zephyrus, Kaiji, rain angst, Spider-e, Pluto, Olynara Sedai, Jungle John, Serpent's Redemption, Chron, PikaNecoMico, Skitts, Layalas, Anna P.T, phoenix of hell, Tarshil, Lawliet's Angel, InkHeart17, xxdeejadoodlexx, Liviania, narni4eva, The Sacred Pandapuff, Rin Cho, Phaenilix, daxterandboxer, shouldbeasleep, Audball, Star Jinin, leesoca, shirosunday, Tanny-san, Ekoaleko, Shakuhachi Jade, joutsenlauluja, AccordingToMel, pandafoot105, Chocolatier-Mihael, next big thing12 **(and we updated in time for your birthday after all!)**, Anonymous, Shikirou, V. V. Kiri, narutoclaymorelove4eva, Celeste Goodchild, aaatttackkkkk, Imperial Mint **and **hellishlygood**! Whew! Hope I didn't miss anyone…

Oh, one more thing, BTW: During the time between this update and the last one, we have accumulated TWO _Poison Apple_-inspired AMVs!!11!!11! Ah, they're both so awesome! **Byakko Ta** created a movie-like trailer for _Poison Apple_ and **RileyKitsune** made a music video to Demon Hunter's _Carry Me Down_. Thankyou both so much! Everyone, you should check them out! There are links at the top of my profile if you're interested in seeing them (and while you're there, you should also check out the link to _Spoil_ by Sayan Visual Studios (_The Last Firstborn _by Celldweller) – a truly amazing _Death Note_ AMV).

**Narroch: **Enjoy!

(**RobinRocks:** And happy birthday to Near! :D Incidentally, out of interest… how many of you predicted that we would update today? Ha, we're so lame…)

Shattered Symphony

The silence of the room was a tangible force, heavy with the weight of negative space. It actively gathered the residual white noise and neutralized it between brick and plaster, until the only audible motion within the room was a passive pulse emanating from the small shell of a boy curled in the corner. He was idly moving chess pieces across a board, the action no more noticeable than the motion on the face of a clock. He melded to the silence, and added no personal life to the room, no trace of human spark.

If anyone else had been observing the room, he would not have been able to suppress the knee jerk reaction of surprise brought about when the boy suddenly spoke. But since there was no-one, and he was completely alone, to him it only seemed as though his internal thoughts had gained vibrational flight through the air; instead of the idea that he was talking to himself.

"None of them really _get_ it, L," Near said conversationally, the words doing nothing more than accentuating the absolute silence surrounding them. He daintily picked up the white king – upon which he had carefully painted a capital 'L'. "Mello, Matt… and most especially Light Yagami."

He put the white king back, one finger still poised over its crown and gazed across the board from his position behind the white army.

"It's not a race," he went on mildly. "It's not a competition. It's about strategy, method, the most efficient route to victory… and if you lose sight of that, then you will fail."

He picked up the two white knights, upon each a neat 'M'.

"Your drive is admirable," he addressed them, "but foolhardy. I cannot make you accept me as L wished, nor can I make you listen to me, but…"

Near didn't finish, putting them back into position. Glancing again across the board at the black king and queen – 'Kira' painted on each in white-out.

"I'm sure you'd choose white for yourself, if I was to play you at this game, Light Yagami," Near murmured, "but… if you're going to kill off your own queen to save yourself…"

Near flicked the black queen off the board; then slowly dragged his baggy sleeve across the board and swept off every single other black piece. The king was left all by himself on his own side, facing an entirely white battalion; a lone spire standing against a white capped wave.

"Still…" Near tilted his head; then lifted up the white king once more, as though to allow him to observe the board too. "…You'd think this easy, wouldn't you? He's all by himself, but… as long as Mello and Matt are at odds with me, their efforts cannot be focused one hundred per cent on the catching of Kira. Don't you think that's worrying? If you aren't one hundred per cent determined to catch him, then you won't."

Still clutching the L-adorned white king, Near rested his head in his hands.

"What am I going to do, L?" He wondered aloud, glancing up at the hotel room ceiling. "_What_ am I going to _do_…?"

* * *

"L said not to go back there," Matt said idly, glancing up from his computer, screens gleaming across his goggles.

"He said for _you_ not to go back there."

"Actually, he made me promise that neither of us would go back there."

"Exactly." Mello finished lacing up his right boot against the hotel room dresser and straightened up. "He made _you_ promise. I haven't promised him a damn thing."

"Can't argue with that." Matt went back to his work. He knew that the argument didn't have even a sliver of a chance stopping Mello, especially not when he was this worked up. Mello was stubborn, and once he sank his teeth into a lead, it was like trying to shake off a dog; using the taboo subject of L as bait, the single keystone to an internal avalanche, and Matt knew there would be no holding him back.

Unless he physically tied Mello down to the bed, (not an _entirely _unappealing scenario…) he would not be able to stop him from going to confirm what he had said earlier. Matt simply didn't have the mental energy to put up with Mello's verbal abuse even if he _did _manage to get the jump on him. And so, just a warning to Mello, and he felt that his duty to L's promise was fulfilled. He looked back up, a twinge of worry making his fingers pause. How would Mello react to this cold foreign L? How would _L _react to Mello?

"Still, he was fairly adamant that it was dangerous for me to be there – for _either_ of us to be there."

"Hence the safety precaution." Mello checked the bullets in his gun, spinning the cylinder in a blur before snapping it shut and clicking on the safety catch. "I doubt I'll be lucky enough for Yagami to be out for the count the way he was for you, but if the little fucker comes anywhere near me he's getting a bullet through the back of his head."

Matt let a smirk tug at his mouth, amused by the thought, and the deadly seriousness surrounding it. Mello was willing to skip steps when it came to L's murderer.

"What are we going to do about arresting him?"

Mello paused with a grimace, irrationally angry at the missing details of protocol. "Nothing yet." He sighed, as if the thought pained him. "We don't have anything on him except for what L wrote in that blue notebook, and that's useless; it was only meant to give us the suspect, not the arrest warrant. And at the moment we can't even do that unless we prove the notebook you took is real. I mean… from what we've seen, Yagami is very, _very_ meticulous. He might have planned for this eventuality."

"You… think it might be a fake?"

"Well, it doesn't look like the one in police photos, that's for sure." Mello tucked the gun into his pants and folded his arms. "Besides, from what I've gathered from the fragmented case files Roger sent to Near and I, on touching a true Death Note, you should be able to see the Shinigami attached to it. And you said you didn't see anything, right?"

"Nope, no Shinigami." Matt frowned. "Unless it was hiding."

"That's always a possibility." Mello glanced at the inconspicuous black notebook sitting on the desk next to Matt's laptop as he worked. "Regardless of whether it's real or not, make you sure you look after it, Matt."

Matt half-saluted him with a wry smile.

"Aye-aye, captain."

"Good." Mello threw on his jacket and headed for the door.

"…You know," Matt observed blandly as Mello's hand touched the door handle, "I don't think L expected _you_ to keep that promise, at least."

Mello turned, profile suddenly stark against the opened doorway.

"He's mad if he actually believed that I _would_."

Matt gave an absent little shake of his head.

"He's mad anyway," he muttered. "Always was."

The words followed after Mello as he closed the door, and stayed in his mind as he strolled down the hall.

L mad? He certainly had his quirks and oddities, but he was not mad. His mind was the farthest-reaching, clearest-seeing, and deepest-delving, following logic like a personal religion. He did not act on impulse or emotion as Mello sometimes did. His intelligence was too potently pure for that.

Or so Mello thought.

Matt's description of a literally and figuratively cold L was something Mello's mind could not wrap around. Just the fact that he was somehow _alive_, or at least existing in some form, was an idea too foreign for Mello to even grab ahold of. It was too good to be true, and even though Mello believed Matt (how could he not believe him? Pale and shaking, telling him every detail of his meeting with L as if it was a disturbingly percipient dream…), he almost did not want to.

L was Justice. He always held that symbolic place in Mello's eyes, and so the fact that he was staying with Kira, within the same walls as the mass murderer, and yet criminals were still piling up on the news, was the most disturbing thing Matt could have told him. It frightened him, that at worst, his sole role model might have been corrupted, and at best, he might have simply stopped caring. At least in death, his memory of L had been incorrigible.

Now things were… strange. Things were changing, and he did not know how to hang onto his beliefs as they swirled out of control. He did not know what to expect, and that looming variable frightened him terribly.

He pulled his jacket tighter around himself, taking comfort in the soft creak of leather around his frame as he stepped out of the lobby doors and into the street.

There was only one way to fix things, only one way to be sure:

He had to go back to the source, and get his answers firsthand.

* * *

"Another one?" Ryuk inquired gleefully from where he was floating beside the bedroom window.

L, still curled up miserably on the bed, lifted his head; unfolding himself and stepping down to come and observe whatever it was that Ryuk was snickering at.

His black lifeless eyes widened a little and he swept away without a word.

Ryuk indulged in a few moments more of sniggering, before floating lazily in the same direction as L, out through the bedroom door and down the corridor.

He came across Light at the kitchen table; dressed, though with his hair mussed, and overall looking pale and exhausted as he slowly, uninterestedly nibbled at the toast he'd made himself.

"Another one," Ryuk told him cryptically, plucking out an apple from the paper bag on the side.

Light glanced at him wearily.

"Ryuk, when they're gone, there won't be anymore," he said.

Ryuk cackled as he took off through the wall, clutching his crimson prize.

"That's what _you_ think…"

—

L was able to silence Mello's startled yell with his hand as he grabbed him from behind; he turned him around and pushed him against the wall, still with his cold, pale hand over the blonde's mouth.

Mello's eyes widened, drawing in an exhilarated breath on seeing the identity of his ambusher; L put a finger to his own lips to signal him to be quiet before letting his hand drop to instead take Mello's wrist. Checking over his shoulder, he started off quickly down the corridor, dragging his heir after him.

Only several floors up, pulling Mello into the unused bathroom he had ventured into only once before, did he deign it safe to speak. He turned, focusing his ominous black void eyes on Mello, who was still in a flustered transitional state. The blonde straightened up under L's unblinking gaze, his face suddenly tightly reined, veiling all emotion.

"I suppose it was too much to hope that Matt would keep his mouth shut," L said dryly.

"Of course it was." Mello was rubbing his wrist where L had been clutching it. "_Fuck_, you're cold."

"Mello, please don't use language like that. Neither Watari nor Roger would have approved of it."

Mello blinked; then smiled, allowing the veil to drop and reveal the vulnerable hope he had been hiding.

"It _is_ you," he said softly.

L shrugged.

"Of sorts." He eyed Mello coldly. "I told Matt that _both_ of you were not to—"

"Never mind about Matt," Mello interrupted waving his hand flippantly to the side; he gazed at L in silence for a moment, eyes dragging eagerly over his lanky frame, drinking in the slouch, the simple clothes and wild dark hair, a questioning pause on the dull eyes reflective as coal. He didn't comment however, satisfied with simply absorbing and verifying L's image before doing something incredibly uncharacteristic for both parties involved.

He embraced him.

Gripping him fiercely about the middle, tight enough to hold him back from death itself, he hissed his words into L's chest.

"Oh, god, L, I missed you _so fucking much_," he whispered, not seeming to care about the iciness of L's body against his own, ignoring the coldness that wormed into him with tendrils of chilled trepidation. "I don't care what you made Matt promise – did you _really_ think I was going to stay away after he'd told me that you'd come back?"

"I had hoped that you might take my wishes to heart," L responded flatly; although he put his hand gently at the back of Mello's head. "They were for the safety of the both of you."

"I won't stay long. I only came to see you. I had to, L – I _had_ to see you."

"Mm." L finally became uncomfortable with being in Mello's grasp and squirmed loose, turning away from him with downcast eyes. "I'm sorry… that you all grew so attached to me. That wasn't the point."

He placed his hands on the row of marble sinks; an unwanted memory of the only other time he'd been in this bathroom clawing its way to the front of his mind.

He'd been with Light, not Mello; a Light chained to his wrist, a Light free of the curse of Kira. It had been in the _aurora _stages of their relationship, the morning after his retaliation against Light, which in turn had been Light's retaliation against his constant "You-are-Kira" abuse.

He supposed, dimly looking back on it and knowing now what he hadn't then, that there was probably only so much accusation someone who believed himself innocent could take; only so far you could push percentages onto someone before a lashing out.

This bathroom was still unused, all these years later; but dusty, with a damp, rusted smell. Light hadn't cleaned it, hadn't ventured anywhere near it, and cameras had never been installed in this section of the building, so L knew it was a safe haven in which he could talk with Mello.

He distractedly rubbed the dust from the row of mirrors in front of him on his sleeve, cutting a swathe of reflection across them with Mello lingering in the wake of awkward silence.

"What did you expect?" Mello finally asked quietly. "Our admiration of you was bred into us. That's what Wammy's House is all about – aspiration to become the next L."

"It's idiotic," L muttered blackly. "It's nothing but a death knell."

"How can you say that—?" Mello started desperately.

"Because _I'm_ dead!" L snapped. "A's dead, B's dead—!" He cut himself off; he could say no more to this Mello – the Mello of a time reversed. Instead he took a deep breath. "…I don't know what Watari thought he was playing at—"

"But it's all we _have_!" Mello burst out. "None of us _chose_ to go to Wammy's House – it's a freaking _orphanage_! How can you think we wouldn't grow attached to you when you're the only thing any of us had?"

"Attachments blind you, connections smother you…" L muttered, neither truly listening to nor addressing Mello. "That's why you should be on your own – because nobody can hurt you… You don't owe anyone a thing."

"No!" Mello snapped. "Don't say that either! I don't agree with that, I _can't_, and…" Mello's voice lowered considerably, a challenge rising up from his hackles. "…I don't think _you_ agree with that either."

"Of course I do."

"Then why fall in love with Light Yagami?! If you believe—"

Mello cut himself off sharply with a choked gasp as every single one of the five mirrors rowed along the wall before them suddenly seized up and cracked, slinging fractures across their surfaces like inverted lightening – as though all simultaneously struck with something blunt.

L didn't blink; but turned to Mello, ignoring the mirrors, now spiderwebbed by the force of his otherworldly anger.

"Don't you _get_ it?" L snapped. "Who killed me? Light Yagami. Why did he kill me? Because he's Kira. _How_ did he kill me?" The dead detective forced out a bitter little laugh. "Because I as good as _let_ him, Mello!" He gave a sudden deep sigh and looked away from the blonde. "Yes, I loved him. It was stupid and wrong. I _knew_ that, and Watari warned me, but… well, we _all_ know the ending to that little love story…"

"Look, I'm sorry your boyfriend turned out to be a lying, murdering bastard, but—"

"It doesn't matter anymore, Mello."

"Of course it matters. You thought love was worthless, and then when you finally felt it, the person you loved killed you, so now you've come back with exactly the same philosophy, just with proof to boot."

"No." L shook his head. "I don't think love is worthless. I think it's wonderful. And this will be hard for you to understand, but even though he killed me, Light loved me. He still does."

"And do you love him?" Mello ground out, nearly growling.

L was very quiet for a long time.

"Yes," he answered eventually, "but, again, in a way that you cannot understand."

Now it was Mello's turn to remain silent for a while.

"You've changed, L," he said eventually, the only thing he could say at that juncture. A statement to confirm his own fears.

L gave a small nod.

"Yes." He tilted his head. "That's exactly my point."

Mello kicked at the floor uncomfortably.

"Matt stole a notebook," he said, unsubtly changing the subject. "But… we can't be sure if it's a real Death Note."

"Light has no fakes that I know of." L paused. "What does it look like?"

"Plain black. It has nothing on the covers at all, not even on the inside. The one in police photographs says 'Death Note' on the front and has instructions inside the front and back covers in English. Matt says he didn't see any Shinigamis either."

"No?"

"Well…" Mello frowned. "I think he'd have remembered that."

"Probably."

"Do you know if it's real?"

L nodded.

"Yes. It is real. What Matt has stolen was once the notebook of the Shinigami Rem, who was attached, at different points, to both Misa Amane and Light Yagami. She died when she killed Watari and I because she lengthened Amane's lifespan, and Light inherited her notebook."

"Then there _is_ more than one notebook," Mello said, more to himself.

"There are three on the Earth that are known of. The one in police custody, with instructions written on it, was the original one to be dropped and picked up by Light. The second – the one Light is still in possession of – was originally Misa Amane's Death Note. The third, as I said, was Rem's personal notebook until the event of her death."

"Another one?" Mello scowled. "So if Yagami still has one, that means he can still kill people."

"That is correct."

Mello pulled his gun out of his belt, snapping off the safety.

"I'm going to go and get it."

"No." L very calmly stepped in front of him. "You are going to leave."

"_What_?" Mello stared at him, lowering his gun. "You're… you're _stopping_ me from confronting Kira?"

"At this present time, yes." L's eyes narrowed. "I had this facility built. It's rigged with camera feeds that Light has no doubt managed to get up and running. Believe me, you will not get near him."

"You don't need to be near someone to blast a hole through them," Mello spat.

"You will _not_ shoot Light Yagami, do I make myself clear?" L hissed. "All these years of work – yours, the NPA's, the FBI's, Interpol's, _mine_… Listen, if you believe you have the evidence to successfully have Light convicted as Kira, then you must contact both the chairman of the NPA and the head of Interpol and obtain arrest warrants from both. Charging in at gunpoint and tying him up will be regarded as kidnap and that will make things very messy. Despite the fact that Light killed off the actual Kira Task Force, the NPA will almost certainly supply you with an equipped team so that you can make an arrest. The fact that Light "killed" L a few days ago makes this that much more difficult."

L paused for a moment, thinking.

"I think at this point the only thing that is going to work is to cash in, so to speak, on your Wammy's House credentials. Are you and Matt in contact with Near?"

Mello's expression darkened.

"Not at this present time, no," he said through gritted teeth.

"Where is he? Still in Winchester?"

Mello shrugged sulkily.

"No idea. I don't keep tabs on him," he muttered blackly.

"Well, I suggest you get in contact with him." L wasn't even looking at his heir now. "Wherever he is, I suspect he will have evidence of his own – and the work of three Wammy's House prodigies will be a stronger case than two."

"What the _fuck_?!" Mello demanded, completely forgetting about his language. "You want us to share our victory with Near when he hasn't done any of the work?!"

"This is _not_ a game!" L blazed, making Mello shut up again. "I don't care what issues you and Matt have with Near, or vice versa – I'm _sick_ of this constant squabbling between you. How _old_ are you, Mello?"

"But that's not _fair_—"

"Of course it's not fair," L snapped. "Nothing _about_ this case is fair – don't you think Kira has always had an extremely unfair advantage over his victims? Don't you think it was unfair of me to take away Light's freedom when he _truly_ believed himself innocent? Don't you think it was unfair that he _killed_ me after everything we'd shared? Even though none of those things were fair at all, they don't matter to the final conclusion – your job as my heir is to catch Kira, no matter how you do it or who you work with."

Mello looked at the filthy floor, simmering.

"_But he's Number One_," he finally murmured, his voice heavy with a sulky rage. "He was your first choice…"

"How dare you say that," L replied icily. "Near wasn't my first choice – _A_ was. And out of the three of you – Near, Matt and yourself – there was _no_ specific order in which you were chosen. You were a unit put together to succeed me in the event of my death. I had no idea the relations between you were so poisoned…"

Mello's gaze went back to the floor. He had mentioned the phone call from Near last night to no-one, not even Matt. It still made his blood boil just thinking about it, and yet…

Near had spoken about what L would have wanted – as in, _L would have wanted them all to work together._

And here was L now, restored from his grave, right in front of him… demanding exactly that.

But still, even as he pushed himself, tried to force himself to say that he _had_ had contact with Near, that he _was_ in Japan, that he wanted to meet and exchange information…

He couldn't; under the icy gaze of this strange, different L, his nerve failed him.

"I'm sorry," he sighed finally, stealing a glance upwards at L through his gold hair.

"Don't apologize," L replied blandly. "Just go – go and do what you must."

Mello put the safety back on his gun and slid it back into his belt.

"I will, L."

"Good. Now leave."

Mello headed for the door; then paused, looking at the cracked mirrors.

"Matt said all the mirrors in the other bathroom were broken too," he said softly. "Just like this."

"I broke them," L replied lifelessly. "Just like this."

"Why?"

"I hate them."

Mello gave a small nod which indicated nothing and started to leave again.

"Mello," L said; making the blonde lean back into the bathroom.

"What, L?"

"…Promise me," L went on, his gaze, as with Matt, on his own distorted reflection and not on his heir, "that no matter what happens… you will not write Light's name down in that notebook."

Mello blinked.

"What the—?"

"_Promise me_, Mello." L glanced at him with his black, endless eyes. "No good will come of it, so please promise."

"Alright, alright, I promise." Mello still looked rather perplexed, but L seemed satisfied.

"Thankyou." He said nothing more, and Mello left amidst the following awkward silence, just as Matt had.

"Jeez, I take it back," Ryuk said, coming through the broken mirrors like a freed spirit once encased within the glass. "You _are_ pretty fun."

"Why do you keep following me?" L spat, glaring at him before walking abruptly away towards the door.

"Like I said, you're fun. I'm never quite sure what you're going to do next – kind of like Light, except you're less of a drama queen."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean, you damned Shinigami?" L hissed venomously, leaving the bathroom.

"It means…" Ryuk floated in front of the dead detective, grinning. "…That I'm still not quite sure whose side you're on, L Lawliet."

"I'm on the side I'm always on," L replied, sidestepping him and walking away. "_Mine_."

"Huh." Ryuk hung back, watching him go. "…What a Light-like thing to say."

* * *

The morning sky was grey; and the streets deserted this early in the day.

As before, when his phone went off in his pocket, Mello presumed that the only person calling him could be Matt.

He was unpleasantly surprised.

"M, don't hang up on me," was Near's greeting.

"N," Mello replied icily. "Funny, I was _just_ talking about you."

"I'm sure it was nothing good. Regardless, I'm going to ask again if you would be interested in joining forces under the name of a second L. Light Yagami has made things very complicated for us by "killing" L – I feel that the only way we can achieve anything against him is together."

…_Exactly what L had said._

Mello was almost too unnerved by the practically-identical wording to argue. If he hadn't just seen L himself, he might have been tempted to think that Near had been possessed by the detective's ghost.

"I…" Mello cleared his throat, gripping a handful of his hair in frustration. "Well… we _might_—"

"Not Matt. Just you."

Mello faltered, feeling yet another one of his nerves be stripped by the calm words.

"Why? What the fuck is your problem with Matt?" He demanded.

"I have no problem whatsoever with Matt," Near replied calmly. "I am merely thinking of the safety of all three of us. It might be risky to have all three of us together in one place. We cannot be certain that Light Yagami does not already know of our existence."

Ugh, he had a point. This was exactly why Mello hated him.

"Have you informed Matt of our… _conversation_ last night?" Near went on.

"…No, not yet."

"Good. Please keep it that way for now." Near paused for a moment. "Will you meet me, then?"

"Alright." Mello almost groaned it, already annoyed with himself for agreeing. "For like five minutes."

"Thankyou. I won't tell you where I am over the phone, but I will get the information to you."

"Hey, _when_ do you want to meet?" Mello snapped.

"Tonight?"

"Okay, okay." Mello heaved an exaggerated sigh. "I'm sure a few minutes in your presence won't kill me…"

"You're too kind."

Near hung up and Mello did the same, folding his phone and jamming it back into his pocket.

Well, if nothing else, L sure as hell couldn't complain now.

—

"How did you enjoy the 'L-is-back-from-the-dead Experience'?" Matt asked dryly from exactly the same place he'd been when Mello had left – at the desk on his laptop, typing speedily – as the blonde closed the hotel room door and leaned up against it, closing his eyes wearily.

"It was… strange," Mello replied, not opening his eyes. "I can't describe it. It was wonderful to see him again, but… he wasn't…"

"He's not very pleasant, is he?" Matt finished flatly. He gave a shrug. "Still, he asked me what I expected from him, and… I guess he has a point. He _did_ die, after all."

"…Yeah," Mello sighed, shrugging off his jacket as he finally pushed away from the door and crossed the room; putting the gun down on the dresser as he passed it. "Points for effort there, I suppose."

"Find anything out from him?"

"Yeah." Mello pointed at the Death Note, still safe on the desk next to Matt. "That's real."

"It is?"

Mello nodded gravely; leaning over Matt to look at the computer screen.

"What are you working on?"

"Oh, I'm still trying to hack into the mainframe of the computer system in that old HQ building our favorite little serial killer is holed up in." Matt gave a sigh. "I know I can get in, but it's taking forever. I mean, I expected this from a system designed by Watari, encrypted by L and now being used by Mr Top-Score-in-all-of-Japan, a.k.a Insane God-Complexed Mass Murderer, but I feel like I've aged about a decade in the time I've been sitting here…"

"What would I do without you, Matt?" Mello sighed, a trace of a laugh tinting his voice as he trailed away. "Want some coffee?"

"I would love some." Matt frowned at the blonde went over to the work surface next to the desk. "You okay, Mello?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Mello offered him a tired smile. "I guess seeing someone come back from the dead kind of takes a lot out of you."

"Tell me about it."

"It's just…" Mello paused, leaning on the surface as the kettle started to boil. "…I've spent all the time since I heard about his death thinking 'If only L hadn't died' or 'If only there was some way for L to come back to life'… I've thought that every time I've read the paper or watched TV and seen a report about yet more victims of Kira. I guess… I always thought that if only L were here, Kira wouldn't be. And yet… by some miracle he _has_ come back, but…"

"I know what you mean," Matt replied quietly. "From where we're standing, it kind of looks like he's… _helping_ Yagami."

"…Maybe he _is_," Mello said miserably. "Love… is a strange thing, isn't it? And we know that he loved Light Yagami – that he loved Kira…"

"And he told you the notebook was a real Death Note?"

"Yeah. Said it belonged to a Shinigami called Rem, but Yagami inherited it after she died."

They both went silent, looking at the plain black notebook sitting unassumingly on the desk beside Matt's laptop.

"…Do you think we should test it?" Mello asked finally. "Just to make sure…?"

Matt looked at the thing in distaste.

"Gotta say, Mello… you have a good point, but that's not something I'm overly keen on."

"Me neither, really. Probably cursed or something. Still…" Mello gave a sudden frustrated sigh. "Jesus, what the fuck is _wrong_ with us? Can't even trust _L_…"

"But he's not L anymore," Matt replied quietly, looking intently at his computer screen. "…At least… he's not _our_ L."

"But that's not his fault."

"No, I know." Matt looked up again at Mello, finishing up with the coffee over at the work surface. "…So what's our next move?"

"A complicated one." Mello brought over the coffee. "I'll explain later, when my brain is less screwed over by the fact that L miraculously managed to claw his way back out of his grave three years after his death…"

"Amen to that."

"…Jeez, Matt, we must all be _mad_. The world's greatest detective gets murdered and we're all tripping over ourselves to queue up to replace him. It's like sending a fucking "Kill Me" _invitation_ to that Yagami bastard…"

"Well," Matt observed, "if you're considering a career change, Mello, you could always work in Starbucks." He sipped at his coffee appreciatively. "You make a mean cup of caffeine."

Mello flipped him off.

"Shut the hell up."

Matt merely grinned.

"Love ya."

* * *

It was the only logical conclusion he could come to.

Light leaned back in his chair and gazed unseeingly up at the ceiling; news channel blaring off to his left and Death Note open in front of him, pen held limply in his hand. None of this registered on his senses however, consumed as he was by the tarnished peeling strip of dream that he was replaying over and over in his mind's eye, honing in on the single clear image of a face, carefully holding it there and tracing its features like the facets of a precious stone.

Near. His eyes. His smile.

The creeping familiarity that hung about him in a cloud of deja vu, haunting him more than the actual detective's physical presence did. The deep wells he had for eyes, the inverted colors, even the way he curled onto the floor… They were L's – he was a reincarnation, yet a twisted variant of such, one born _before_ the death of the previous version.

Of course, Light would kill him. Near and Mello – both of them were going to die.

But _L_…

He was more complicated, _always_ was more complicated. A simple murder would not suffice; not for him. And even if Light had that ability, he would not employ it. Because there was a piece missing to that puzzle. A loophole needed to exist for life in the same way that it existed for death. There _must_ be a way to restore him to life for good. If he had bent the logic of the world already by coming back from the dead, and then, by a further romantic rule of the Death Note, another's heart would become his for twenty-three days…

There _must_ be a once-and-for-all way to give him life once more – a way to sever the bridge between the living and the dead he stood upon so precariously.

A way to awaken him from his sleeping death forever.

And, logically, the only conclusion he could come to was this:

Near's heart.

The heart of a reincarnation born before the death of the original.

So that would be it, then. The grand scheme flowed out before him like a great majestic river, slow and yet unstoppable; a global wave that would turn red with death, killing and cleansing as it went. Once Mello and Near were gone, there would be no-one left to oppose him. Kira would finally be victorious, and when the time came – when the entire world had accepted Kira as Justice and Law – he would drop the masks of both Coil and Deneuve and emerge as God.

And during that time, once he reached that all-seeing peak, he would perform the alchemic formula upon L one last time – he would have to go through the agony of crossing realms only once more, and then…

He would be _free_.

All of the pain that weighed him down would be lifted; the bitter betrayal he felt would dissipate like hot sea spray – he would never have to know the awful truth that Light had ever killed him. And although Light would no longer be able to hide the deaths of the task force from him, he figured, if he was to rule as Kira _and_ have L back once and for all…

He would simply _have_ to tell him the truth of Kira sooner or later. But it would not be given as a guilty confession, instead it would be a proud declaration. He would show him everything, explain his beliefs, and the fruition of his plans. And in that position – with L publicly declared dead, with no Watari, with no heirs… L would still be utterly powerless to do anything against him.

He would have _nothing_ left in this world to cling to but Light.

And he would see that it was Good.

That was it – all it would take.

Light smiled, his gaze still unseeing as his mind went back to stroking the creepily familiar features of Near's face.

His heart would be the awakening kiss—

And they could finally have the happily ever after they both so badly wanted.

* * *

The AC in their hotel room seemed twice as effective after sex, when their combined body warmth rolled off them in steamy waves of spent panting and sweating, and the frigid air settled over their heated forms causing an uncomfortable juxtaposition. Not much for cuddling, they enjoyed the sated silence for as long as they could stand it before their shivering won out and forced them to get up. Matt was the first to break, muttering about the usefulness of a blanket shoved to the floor as he stood up to rummage around for clothes.

"You know what strikes me as strangest about it?" Matt said, pulling on his striped top.

Mello was still lying on his back on the bed, feebly attempting to conserve body heat by curling up beneath the thin sheets, naked but for his rosary. Mello turned his heavy lidded gaze towards the redhead.

"About what?"

"L and his little love affair with Yagami."

"Hn. What about it?"

"They're so _opposite_. I mean, personally…" Matt stood up, hitching up his cargo pants and buckling his belt. "…I think that whole "opposites attract" stuff is bullshit. I mean, look at us – sure, we have different likes and dislikes and stuff, but fundamentally, we're pretty similar, and that's what makes us compatible, right? But we know what L was like – I don't mean to sound disrespectful to the guy, because he was a fucking genius, but… he was kind of a slob. And then you have that Yagami guy – extremely handsome, very well-spoken and polite and with a designer wardrobe. Makes you wonder what the hell attracted them to each other."

Mello gave a shrug.

"Who knows? Guess it doesn't really matter."

"No, guess not…"

Mello frowned, sitting up in bed, sheets pooling at his lap.

"Where are you going, anyway?" He asked, suddenly aware that the redhead was pulling on his boots.

"Going to get that other notebook." Matt sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on the laces. "The more evidence we have the better, right? Not to mention he could be using it right this second to take out more criminals, which is what we are trying to stop. And after all…" He glanced up at Mello, eyes gleaming wickedly. "…L told _you_ not to go and get it – not me."

"Okay, good plan." Mello scratched at his blonde hair, looking at the bedside clock. "Guess it's kind of early to be in bed, anyway. It's only ten-thirty…"

Matt shrugged amicably, adjusting the finishing touch at his forehead – his goggles.

"Hey, I got urges." He grinned. "I'm only human."

"Says you." This was actually perfect – now Mello could go and meet Near without Matt inquiring where _he_ was going. "Take the gun, anyway. L keeps going on about it "being dangerous" for us to be there…"

"Way ahead of you." Matt twirled the gun around his forefinger idly, then added as an afterthought- "…Hey, you think I should kidnap L while I'm there?"

Mello paused, seriously weighing the words. It _was_ something he had been considering. But thinking back to how adamant L was about not shooting Yagami, or using the Death Note on Yagami, and most disquieting, the admission of loving Yagami in a way he wouldn't understand…

And L was right. Mello _didn't _understand, and that was why it gnawed at him. But even if he couldn't comprehend the reasons for L's love, he knew the effects of it, how powerful an emotion it could be, since he had felt it himself. It could change anyone, make them defy their most sacredly held beliefs for the sake of maintaining that bond.

It was an untrustworthiness he couldn't risk. Even if the admission of it concerning L, his sole role model, made him feel slightly queasy.

"I can't see him cooperating with that. He seems pretty set on staying there with Yagami, even though… he also seems pretty set on us exposing him as Kira."

"See? He's mad. Always has been."

"I don't know, it's…" Mello frowned. "There's something… I just can't puzzle out there…"

Matt shrugged.

"Eh, I don't think it would be much fun having him here, anyway. He has a major "disturbed vengeful spirit" vibe, and that aside, it would make the sex a little awkward."

"Jesus, is that all you think about?"

"Kind of hard not to, when you're lying naked in bed like that."

"The only reason for that is because you already—"

Matt cut him off by leaning across the bed and kissing him; Mello pressed upwards into it, and, as he did so, lifted the beaded thread of his rosary off over his own head and transferred it over Matt's. Matt pulled away from the kiss in surprise, looking down at the tiny crucifix now stark against his black and white stripes.

"For luck," Mello supplied, answering an unasked question.

"…What's with the rosary, Mello?" Matt asked.

Again.

"Because…" Mello paused, looking down at the bedsheets. "…Because it's a symbol of the fact that I do not accept Kira as God."

"Heh." Matt smiled. "You're funny, Mello."

He started to laugh; and, after a moment of being pissed off, Mello laughed with him.

* * *

"—What the hell?!"

Light bolted up, knocking his chair over; as he strained up to glance at one of the many monitor screens sprawled before him. His nostrils flared indignantly and his eyes were wide as they followed the movement of a small figure strolling languidly across the lobby.

Those same eyes that told him that the trespasser was named 'Mail Jeevas'.

He couldn't see the figure's face, though – the image was too small, and these cameras were temperamental and grainy after being left abandoned for three years. Zooming in wasn't an option.

"How the hell did he get past the security code?" Light hissed, more to himself, grinding his teeth together in irritation; as Ryuk floated over to look at the screen. "Is it down, or did he somehow override it…?"

"What, this guy _again_?" Ryuk exclaimed, doing a double-take.

Light's head snapped up, whipping around to pin the Shinigami with an accusatory glare.

"What do you mean by "again"?!" He snapped.

"Oh, he was wandering around in here last night too." Ryuk snickered. "You were asleep."

"And you didn't think to _tell_ me?!" Light blazed, suddenly reeling at the thought of someone inside his previously safe fortress.

Ryuk grinned his Great White grin.

"Now why would I have done that?"

Light swore under his breath and snatched up his Death Note and a pen, storming out of the office; Ryuk soared after him like a kite.

"Stop following me!" Light spat at him.

"No way – I _have_ to see this."

Light ignored this, pushing his hair out of his eyes. This had unnerved him badly – he didn't know if it was safe to kill this guy, but he also couldn't let him roam around in here as he pleased, most especially if this was in fact the _second_ time he'd been in here.

Did that mean he was looking for something specific?

And who was he? Who was he working with? Did _L_ have something to do with this?

L…

_L!_

Damn it, he couldn't just leave L wandering around freely either with this "visitor" exploring the place – L, either living or dead, had a nasty habit of making things worse for Light when there was really no call for it…

That was his priority – finding L. He could find and kill this guy after he'd locked L into a storage closet…

He ran through the quarters he was presently inhabiting, checking every room, Ryuk fluttering after him.

"Ryuk, where is he?" Light panted, coming to the last corridor. "You must have… seen him today…"

"Last I saw him, he was in the bedroom," Ryuk sniggered.

Light didn't know if he could believe this or not, but it was true that he still hadn't looked for the dead detective in either the bathroom or the bedroom.

The bathroom was empty but for its array of broken mirrors, leaving the bedroom as his last hope. He didn't have time to check every single other room in the building…

L was sprawled upside down the bed, his position somehow reminiscent of a dead bird, killed after flying headlong into a glass door. He turned his icy, baleful gaze on Light as the younger man burst in through the door, breathing heavily.

Light had never been so pleased to see this version of him.

"There you are…!" He almost stumbled to the bed, grabbing L by his wrist. "Come on, get up."

"Don't pull so hard, Light-kun," L replied blandly, sitting up and trying to tug his wrist back. "You'll snap my arm again."

"Get off the bed!" Light seethed, ignoring him. "Come on, I need you to move!"

"Why could that be?" L mused flatly. "Could it be that Light-kun has perhaps sought the services of a prostitute? Is that why I cannot be on the bed?"

"_Off_!" Light grabbed him around the chest and dragged him onto the floor; and had just begun to haul him up under his arms—

When the bedroom door swung open.

Light let go of L, straightening slowly, clutching at his Death Note; he knew this boy. He recognized him – memories buried beginning to unearth themselves again.

Matt blinked at him – clearly he hadn't expected Light to actually be _in_ here.

"Mail Jeevas." Light smiled sickly at him. "…L's third heir."

He glanced down at L, who was still on the floor; his eyes wide as he gazed at Matt, but his entire form motionless.

"Now," Light said, opening his Death Note to a nice clean page. "…You work with Mello, don't you…?"

Matt, still frozen, was silent a few moments more, apparently stunned too that Light knew his true name; the hush punctuated by a harsh laughter that the redhead could not hear.

Ryuk, cackling behind Light as he poised his pen.

"No?" Light asked politely. "No final words?"

"Sure." Matt suddenly composed himself, sliding out the gun and aiming right at Light's forehead. "Drop it, Yagami."

Light's eyes widened – and though he did not drop the Death Note, he did stop writing.

"What?" Now it was Matt's turn to smile. "Think I won't shoot you? Have to tell you – being chased by L spoiled you. He's more of a gentleman than me and Mello put together." He cocked the gun. "Now drop it, before I blast a hole right through your skull."

Light backed up against the dresser, still clutching the notebook.

"Oh dear, the tables have turned," Ryuk commentated gleefully, yellow eyes darting between Matt and Light.

"I'll give you until three," Matt drawled. "If that notebook's not on the floor without my name in it by the time I get there, I'll redecorate your lovely bedroom here with your brains – and I hear you quite a lot of them, incidentally."

"Matt, please put the gun away." L had risen; and now stepped in front of Light, obscuring Matt's line of fire.

"Wh…?" Matt _did_ lower the gun a little, stunned. "_L_… what are you…?"

"English," Ryuk observed with a grin, taking note of the language switch.

"Matt," L said again levelly, "put the gun away and get out."

Matt raised the gun again, his eyes narrowing.

"I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing, L, but I'm not leaving here without that notebook," he spat.

L said nothing; only spread his arms to completely shield Light.

"Why are you protecting him?!" Matt cried desperately. "He's a murderer – and he's _your_ murderer!"

"It is no more your place to kill him than it is his place to kill criminals."

"I won't kill him if he just gives me the fucking notebook!"

"Matt, _get out_!"

"But—" Matt's eyes darted towards Light – finding that, shielded by L, he was writing again. "Jesus Christ, he's writing my name down! Is that what you fucking _want_, L—?!"

Matt leapt to the side, attempting to get around L as he squeezed the trigger, firing at Light in a desperate attempt to save himself—

It was a clear shot, the bullet streaming through unhindered air straight towards Light, until reality suddenly tripped over itself, slowing down with timeshift amnesia as seconds became minutes. L had moved, faster than Matt's eyes could follow, faster than humanly possible, so fast that the bullet seemed to slow down as it sank into his gut as he deliberately took the shot to save Light.

All three of them were silent, motionless, waiting for reality to catch up with itself again and fix the horror that had supplanted itself in its wake.

Matt was the first to take a breath.

"What are you doing? _What are you doing?!_" he screeched, panicking. His voice triggered Light back into action and he began feverishly writing in the Death Note once again. Matt let out an enraged roar, still trying to aim past L in order to shoot – but as the bullet left the barrel, L was suddenly there to block it with his own body, taking the shot without a sound.

Light was still writing, each little stroke driving the fear of death into Matt until he screamed again, this time terrified. He raised the gun and shot L, not even trying to get around him, firing again and again, lodging six bullets into him, perhaps hoping that he'd collapse and thus be no longer protecting Light from harm…

Light raised the pen and then his eyes, glancing at Matt, who was breathing heavily, the hand holding the smoking gun still shaking. There were tears in his eyes, maybe because he'd just shot L—

L was still gazing at him impassively; his torso now riddled with bullet holes that didn't bleed.

"_What are you doing, L_?" Matt whispered a third time.

L said nothing; and, after a long moment, Matt's eyes suddenly widened and glazed over, and the arm holding the gun dropped limply to his side. He turned on his heel and walked out of the room without another word or a backwards glance.

L dropped to the floor with the dull sound of his knees hitting the carpet. He fell forward, as if suddenly boneless right before catching himself with his hands. His head hung down hidden, cradled on the floor, still weighed down with bullets, and even more subdued than before.

Light closed the Death Note, holding it tightly to his chest as though clutching it so possessively was the only thing that could keep him going. He approached the detective.

"You saved me," he said softly. "…L?"

"If you don't get out of the room this second I will rip you apart," L replied, his tone blank ; he said it towards the floor, his voice a little muffled.

Light was pretty certain he didn't just mean that as a figure of speech. He gathered his frayed nerves into a bundle and left the bedroom, closing the door behind him; Ryuk followed a few moments later.

"I don't understand why he saved me," Light murmured numbly, starting off down the corridor. "Why he… _let_ me kill his own heir."

Ryuk shrugged.

"Who knows?" He smirked. "I reckon he's crying right now, though."

Light stopped for a moment, blinking as the words sunk in.

"I didn't think he _could_ cry," was his quiet, devastatingly sincere reply.

* * *

"Well?" Mello eyed Near warily as the small pale boy pawed over the blank-covered Death Note with immense interest. "What do you make of it?"

"Are you sure it's real?"

"Of course I'm fucking sure!"

Near glanced up, eyes gleaming.

"How can you be? Have you… tested it?"

"No."

"Then—"

"Look, just take my fucking word for it, okay?"

Near tilted his head, smiling lazily.

"Alright, I'll take your word for it. I suppose this is hardly a fair trade of information, at any rate. I have nothing to offer you in exchange for this."

"You're not keeping it!" Mello snatched it back, shoving it roughly into his jacket pocket. "And yeah – I don't know why I agreed to this. Your piece of information was merely 'Light Yagami is Kira and is probably still alive'? Yeah, _way_ ahead of you."

"Well, at least now I know where I stand." Near looked at the ceiling. "So Matt has gone back to this Kira HQ building again?"

"To get the other notebook."

"Sounds risky."

"Matt can handle himself," Mello snapped.

"Hm." Near paused. "…You know, I must admit, Mello, I was surprised you changed your mind and agreed to meet me. I didn't expect you to."

Mello shrugged offishly, glancing about the hotel room; his attention was caught by the chess board set up under the desk lamp.

A full army of white faced off against a single black piece – the king.

"Still into your stupid toys and games?" The blonde sneered, crossing to the board.

"Yes," Near replied pleasantly from the chair he was perched in, twisting his hair around his finger.

Mello tilted the black king, glancing at the word 'Kira' painted on its shiny lacquer black surface.

"Cute," he said venomously. "What the hell is this, your little Kira-catching strategy game?"

"Something like that."

"Oh, and I suppose you regard Matt and I as your fucking _pawns_!" Mello spat, rounding on him.

"Not at all." Near nodded towards the board. "Look for yourself."

Mello glared at the board again, gaze darting around until—

"Knights, eh?" The sneer was still present in his voice, but his overall demeanor was less aggressive as he picked up the two pieces to look at them more closely. "Just a whim?"

"No, I thought about it. Knights are powerful frontliners."

"Right." Mello put them back; then lifted the white king.

"L," he murmured.

"Yes." Near brushed some of his snow-white hair back from his eyes. "…What's the matter?"

"I… L, he…" Mello took a sharp breath; then put the king back down again. "Nothing. It's nothing."

"You were going to say something about L," Near said, his voice suddenly more urgent.

"I said it was nothing," Mello snapped. He glanced again at the board. "…You haven't got a piece with your _own_ code letter on it."

"I couldn't decide which piece would suit me best."

"Here." Mello smirked and picked up the slender white piece next the king. "How about the _queen_?"

"The queen is the most powerful piece on the board," Near replied expressionlessly. "That is very kind of you to say, however, Mello."

Mello slammed the queen back down, glaring at Near balefully.

"I'm leaving," he announced abruptly.

"Of course." Near got down from his chair and padded across the room towards the hotel room door, brushing past Mello as he did so. "Thankyou for coming at all."

"There's no need to show me out."

"It's only polite." Near opened the door for him. "Goodbye, Mello."

Mello only snorted as he stalked out; Near waited until he was down the hotel corridor before letting the door swing shut again.

"Stealing this from you," he murmured, slipping the Death Note out from his own pocket, "was _less_ polite, but… I really would like to have a better look at it."

Of course, Mello hadn't even noticed him taking it as he'd brushed up against him on his way to the door – but the fact was that Near had learned more from L than even L himself had realized.

* * *

"Matt?" Mello called the redhead's name as he pulled the hotel room door shut behind him. "Are you back? I went out to the store a few blocks over to get us some snacks and stuff. I got you some more cigarettes."

Mello put the paper bag down on the desk next to Matt's dormant laptop, frowning. Wasn't he back yet? Mello had been gone quite a while, and he'd left after Matt had, so he'd expected him to have returned before him. He shrugged off his leather jacket and tossed it down over the desk, heading towards the door that led to the bedroom area.

"Matt?" Mello pushed down the door handle and leaned into the bedroom. "Are you h…?"

Mello trailed off as an electric bolt of horror sluiced through him, dissolving him from the inside as his eyes widened and pupils retracted to tiny trembling dots at the sight before him.

Matt was lying on the bed, eyes closed, perfectly still; he looked as though he had just accidentally fallen asleep.

Except for the dark oily crimson stain that drenched both himself and the bedsheets, scenting the room with a sickly combination of salt and metal. The air was heavy with spilt blood, humid with lost life, tinting even Mello's vision with a hazy red fog that seemed to boil inside him, bucking fear, disbelief, and absolute horror through him in merciless waves that snatched away all of his preciously guarded self-control. His muscles trembled violently, his breath snagged on the nausea swirling in his throat, and his brain had broken free of its organic mooring and was now tripping and screaming within his skull, unable to register the sight before him.

Matt had cut both of his wrists, presumably with the large shard of broken mirror still clutched in his right hand. The mirror at the dresser had been smashed out, smaller slivers scattered over both the dresser surface and the floor like strewn silver coins.

But none of these – not even Matt himself – was what grabbed Mello's attention and held it in a lethal, deathlike chokehold.

It was the words, smeared on the wall by Matt in bleeding red script before he'd died:

_You're next, Mello_

* * *

**Narroch: **Oh dear... What just happened...

**RobinRocks: **She knows what happened – as do all of you. Oh, yes, we went there:

WE KILLED MATT.

O.o

**Narroch: **I love Matt, really I do. But I am not too attached to him. I don't understand how you could be since he was only in the show for like a minute and a half. I mean, the coolest thing he did was die. And even that was a punk way to go, sorry to say. With this... we are just keeping it canon; we don't want to steal his single moment of glory from the series by not killing him. (Robinrocks probably disagrees...XD)

**RobinRocks: **Well… I love Matt. _Everyone_ loves Matt. I'll never understand why because of the whole minute-and-a-half thing. Is it the goggles? The Tim Burton stripes? The "Yeah-sure-whatever-you-say-Mello" attitude? Every other well-loved _DN_ character had to work to be loved, it seems – L, for example, had to pay his quirky dues for seven whole volumes before anyone would cry over his death (and, in some cases, refuse to watch/read the latter half of _Death Note_). Matt, on the other hand, is in the grand total of about seven _panels_…

_So why do we all love Matt?!_

Uh… anyway, my point is that I love Matt and didn't want to kill him off – but at the same time I am going to confess to the fact that it was actually idea to kill him. It would have been nice for him to avoided his canon fate, but… he _had_ to die. He really, really did.

**Narroch: **No really... his death has a very important purpose, and it was splashy too! So fun to write...

**RobinRocks: **So, yeah… Apologies to all Major Matt Fans. Please don't stop reading! If nothing else, you can guarantee Mello isn't going to forgive this…

You're _really_ in trouble now, Light… O.o

**Narroch:** Once again, thankyou_thankyouTHANKYOU _for all the encouraging/critical/random reviews! Your feedback really encourages us and helps keep this story alive! We love each and every reviewer, you are all lovely!

- RobinRocks and Narroch


	27. To The Slaughter

**RR: **Well, well, I think it's fair to say that there wasn't a single review last time that didn't mention the untimely death of Matty (although some of you cared considerably more than others). Gah, we're sorry! I love Matt, honestly! But he had to go, unfortunately…

Still, to make up for it, we updated quicker this time! Hurrah!

Important thing to mention: We are on what I call 'The Final Five' – by which I mean that, including this chapter, there are only five chapters of _Poison Apple_ left to go. Which is good, I guess – we've been going almost a year with this. Thanks so much for all your ongoing support and readership, guys! :)

**Narroch: **I've got nothing to say except, "Tally-ho, Mello!". Enjoy.

To The Slaughter

The image was real. The heart-stopping, ear-shattering, soul-clenching scream was real. And even after the wavering sound that comprised of hundreds of emotions strung onto one note finished dripping from Mello's constricted throat, the blood did not stop dripping from the bed.

Overwrought senses screeched to a halt, while thoughts swung wildly, either fixed on practical details of immediate perception (nearly black blood, pooled like an oil spill across the rumpled waves of sheets and limbs) or transfixed by a purity of pain Mello had not felt in a long time. The full horror unfurled before him as his mind numbly fingered a single observation with unforgiving certainty.

No pulse.

Should have been obvious, really; that there wouldn't be one. Given that Mello's hands were slippery with blood as he grasped Matt's torn wrists, feeling how the tendons yielded too easily under pressure, desperate to sense even the faintest glimmer of a heartbeat. Given the undeniable fact that Matt's chest was completely still; his face completely slack.

Nothing. No pulse. No breath. No sign of life at all. _Nothing_.

"…_Matt_…" Mello gasped it out as his breath came in short shallow pants, unable to properly clear the stone lodged in his throat. His eyes darted across the crumpled boy, seemingly overwhelmed by the sight, not knowing where to start, what to do; his mind was building up a chilling maelstrom of denial, bumbling over the idea of CPR, blood transfusions, and tourniquets – he could even hear the rip of cloth he should have been tearing. Instead he simply took the redhead's shoulders, lifting him partway off the bloody sheets. Shook him, as though trying to awaken him from a particularly stubborn sleep, even when his head slumped backwards, completely indifferent, lolling about on a nerveless neck. "…Matt! Wake up! _Matt!_"

Dead. He knew he was dead. Mello wasn't stupid. Second smartest kid at Wammy's House, after Near. He wasn't an idiot. He knew Matt was dead. That he had been dead for a while now. There was just too much blood. So much blood, it didn't seem possible that it could have all come from Matt.

He couldn't feel the tears. His eyes just felt hot – not wet, though he knew he _must_ be crying, because burning tracts were sliding from his face and hitting the sheets, darker spatters on the blood already there.

"_Matt!_" The cry of the name echoed in the silent room; off the bloodstained walls, on which that taunt was scrawled, as Mello clutched Matt tightly to him, sobbing softly into his shoulder. The abomination of the moment was perfectly expressed as Mello explored the furthest corners of human loss; weeping silently, his mouth open and his arms cradling a heavy unresponsive body.

But the tears weren't enough; the pure agony of loss was barely conceived in its complete form before its twin began to crawl from the bloody afterbirth. Rage twisted painfully through Mello, balling up inside him like a trembling fist.

Kira. That fucking _bastard_ Light Yagami – first he'd taken L, and now Matt…? It had to have been him, even though Matt had clearly killed himself rather than dying through a heart attack the way L had – but the taunt, the _You're next, Mello_ dripping sluggishly on the wall, that could only be Kira's doing…

Matt's name… How could Kira have known it? There were no records of his name anywhere at all – only Matt himself had known it. As close as they had been, Mello and Matt had agreed to keep their true names a secret from each other, in case either one of them was ever manipulated by Kira into killing the other.

Maybe that single intimate secret was the only reason Mello was still alive right now.

Kira… Name…

Mello slowly raised his head as realization bloomed in a vengeful red haze. The Death Note Matt had stolen was wedged in his jacket pocket.

_And he knew Kira's name and face._

Murderous intent loomed out from him, sudden, choking, oppressive; bolstering down the edges of his grief and turning it into something manageable, something he could grab and hold onto in an overwhelming ocean of loss, floating alone in a world without Matt. The white hot anger gave him something to do, a small way to physically fix the broken reality. He'd made a promise to L, but… But it was worthless now, with inconsolable rage eclipsing everything else. _Even_ a promise to L meant less to Mello than Matt did.

Light Yagami, with his pretty face that Mello knew, wasn't getting away with this.

Mello lay Matt gently down on the sheets again, turning his arms over to hide at least that small fraction of self-inflicted gore, and numbly left the bedroom area of the hotel room, heading back to the table. He was practically vibrating with fury, though he didn't think killing Kira was going to bring him much satisfaction – it wouldn't revive Matt. But it was all he could think of to do, the only action he could take after such a staggering blow…

How had L come back…?

Didn't matter. Mello rifled through his jacket for the Death Note in silence, first carefully – then frantically as he realized that he couldn't find it. Gone? How could it be gone? Had he dropped it? He'd have heard that fall out of his pocket, surely?

Unless it hadn't _fallen_—

Mello froze. _Near_. Near had brushed up against him as he'd gone to the door of his hotel room. Had the little fucker taken it then, without Mello noticing…?

The blonde sank wordlessly into a chair, suddenly unable to stand under the weight of his own anger. The inconceivable unfairness of the situation, his inability to do _anything _hit him like a physical fist, and his own hands clenched tightly in response, so tight they shook against the armrests. Matt's dormant laptop was still flashing idly, he couldn't stand to look at it, knowing that Matt would never sit at it again and—

He swept it to the floor angrily as his internal storm wrought external damage. The computer made a cracking sound as it hit the hotel room floor, though he didn't think it was broken. He ignored it, his gaze suddenly glued to something that had been sitting behind the computer.

The gun.

Its smooth black metal beckoned his hand, offered him another outlet, and opened a new path for his rage to follow.

…Just because Near had stolen the Death Note, it didn't mean he couldn't send Yagami to Hell.

He stood and picked it up. Its familiar grip had an invigorating effect on him, and suddenly he was filled with adrenaline that dissolved the numbness and complimented his murderous passion. Mello pulled on his jacket again, shoving the gun into his belt; but drifting back towards the bedroom. Didn't know what he was expecting to see, but…

Matt was still lying in exactly the same position, and despite knowing that was what he would find, the awful sight still caused an involuntary bolt to cleave through him. Mello crossed over to Matt, touching his cold, pale cheek gently – though his dark eyes were fixated on the message Matt had written on the wall in his own blood.

_No, __**you're**__ next, Yagami – make no mistake about that…_

His fingers trailed down, touching the onyx beads of the rosary he'd threaded around Matt's neck in the last moments they'd spent together. He hesitated – then grasped them and slipped them off over Matt's head, taking them back. After all, between them, they weren't a token of love, nor an icon of a shared belief in the Christian faith; they were a symbol of Kira's godlessness.

He leaned down and kissed Matt on the mouth.

Nothing.

"I'll get him, I promise, Matt," Mello whispered, his voice cracking. "I'll get the fucker… for you."

* * *

"I don't understand this!" Light snapped; the words heated by anger, sharpened by fear. He paced across the room, breathing through his teeth in a tightly-controlled panic. After a couple more silent circuits, his fists clenched on their own accord and he finally rounded on L, curled up on the bed. "I don't understand why you protected me if you're just going to counterbalance it with stunts like this! For the last time, _where is it_?!"

"I don't know," came the muted response, spoken automatically; mechanically, as if he had already said it many times.

"You _do_ know!"

"No, I don't," L replied tiredly. "I didn't take your notebook."

"I'm not saying you _took_ it – I'm saying you know where it is!" Light snapped. "That Mail Jeevas guy, he wasn't surprised to see you alive… You know what that tells me, L? That tells me that he'd previously had contact with you! I'm not stupid, Ryuk already let it slip he was in here last night too, and I haven't seen Rem's Death Note since then…!"

L gave a deep sigh, as though trying to build up his quickly-dissolving patience.

"I do wish Light-kun wouldn't shout at me so after I just saved his life," he said blandly, fixing him with a perceptively cooler stare. "I could have let him shoot you."

"Don't change the subject!" Light practically roared, his nerves smoking. He was completely shocked by the loss, terrified of the vulnerability, and infuriated by L's indifferent denial. What was the _point _of L's sacrificial act if he was only going to let him be killed by an AWOL Death Note? Either L was telling the truth about his innocent ignorance, or he was leading him into an even grander trap; and Light could not afford to let that question remain unanswered.

L sat up, his cool gaze dropping a few more degrees to become perfectly frigid.

"…Or…" he murmured, looking at Light with a detached curiosity "…I could kill you myself. Right now. Very, very easily. You know you can't hurt me back, although you've tried enough times.…" He crouched, viewing Light with predatory eyes, fueled not by hunger, but by exacting retribution. "The things I could do to you, Light, if only I had half a mind to."

Light hated the small step back, the lick of apprehension those words caused. He compensated by getting louder.

"Look, I said thankyou for saving me!" He burst out. "I know it wasn't easy for you, but if you chose to protect _me_, then why won't you tell me where the Death Note is? I know you had something to do with its disappearance—"

"Light-kun, I will say this once more," L sighed, "and then I would like you to remove yourself and leave me alone before I _do_ get that half a mind to hurt you very, very badly. I did not move Rem-san's Death Note from where you had left it on the desk, and I do not know where it is. Neither of those statements are lies." The vindictive gleam was veiled again as he lay down again and rolled over, presenting Light with his back. "Now get out."

Light could feel himself trembling, the volatile mix of rage and fear turning his blood to battery acid. He wanted to continue arguing, he wanted to scream at L, punch him and make him bleed. But he could not, L knew this and Light knew it as well, which left him rooted to the floor fighting back impulses that made his fists shake. Finally, after a few taut seconds his logic won out over his emotions, and he turned stiffly to leave. It was safer, her reasoned to do so, as before, when L had threatened to rip him apart. L had only promised not to tear out his eyes, after all. He hadn't made any such promise about any other part of his body…

It was strict self-preservation that made Light leave.

"No luck?" Ryuk cackled when Light came back into the office.

"No." Light sank back into his chair, still smoldering. "He's even less helpful than _you_, and that's saying something."

"So what are you gonna do?"

"Well…" Light leaned on the desk before the computer monitor, burying his face in his palms. "…I admit I was taking a gamble with getting Mail Jeevas to write that message to Mello on the wall. I expect Mello will turn up here – that's my plan, anyway. However, if they have the notebook, it's possible that Mello, on the condition that he knew my face, would have written my name down. Since that hasn't happened, I presume I'm safe – I just came to the logical conclusion that Mail Jeevas took the notebook, after all. It might not be true. L could be – and probably is – lying. It's possible that he has just hidden it. He may have even destroyed it. Since I still have another notebook, I haven't lost my memories."

"How come you didn't just get Mail Jeevas to write Mello's name down in the notebook?" Ryuk inquired. "That way you could have gotten rid of both of them."

"I don't _want_ to get rid of Mello," Light replied snippily. "Not yet, at least. He's the only connection I have to Near."

"So you got Jeevas to write that taunt on the wall to get Mello to come _here_?" Ryuk asked, confused.

"That's right." Light lifted his head again. "I'll find Near through him and then kill him."

"I don't see him telling you that, no matter how politely you ask." Ryuk nodded at the other Death Note beside Light on the desk. "Or how _persuasive_ you are."

"Don't be an idiot!" Light snapped, opening the desk drawer; he reached inside, taking out a small, black semi-automatic pistol. "I have other methods…"

"You're gonna shoot him?"

"No. This isn't a regular gun. It's loaded with tranquilizer darts."

Ryuk's grin widened with curiosity.

"Where'd you get _that_?"

"Upstairs. This place is equipped with just about everything." Light ran his fingers over the gun; then slipped the Death Note into the drawer and shut it. "…Ironic. L is _helping_ me to bring down his own heirs."

Ryuk only sniggered, rawboned limbs swaying slightly.

"Always the one you least expect, right…?"

Light snorted with disdain.

"I suppose so. That's how I got away with being Kira this long…"

There was a small silence before Ryuk leaned forward again, his voice a low delighted rumble.

"You're sure he'll come?"

"Yeah." Light hesitated; then gave a certain nod. "Yeah, he'll come."

"How do you know?"

Light leaned back in his chair, closing his chocolate eyes.

"…Because he's human," he replied quietly.

Ryuk gave a snort and floated away.

"You humans," he muttered mockingly.

"Ryuk."

"Yeah?"

"Don't forget what I asked you for."

"Yeah, yeah…" Ryuk rolled his bulbous eyes. "I heard you. Jeez, what am I, a delivery boy…?"

Light said nothing more to the Shinigami as he filtered seamlessly through the wall; just leaning back in silence for a long moment or two. He needed the few seconds to scornfully rake his fingers through the glacial discontent that had pooled in his stomach and gather himself together. It felt good, blowing all the thoughts away for a single second, holding onto the solitude before taking another breath; having those moments to himself, as he had chosen to have them – not because he'd been left on his own.

On opening his eyes, however, he found that he wasn't alone at all – in the reflection of the black computer monitor on stand-by before him he could see a white glare that could only be L standing in the doorway of the office.

He was surprised to see him in here; and his startling presence was enough to dust away the tiny bubbles of anger still swimming in Light's veins. L hadn't ventured anywhere near this room (_the room in which he had died_) in all the time they'd been here. Nonetheless, given the tone of L's voice and the sincerity of his threats to Light's general welfare not even fifteen minutes before, the younger man slowly rose from his seat, turning to face L with a very obvious prickly wariness.

"Have you come to tell me where you hid that notebook?" He asked, injecting confidence into his voice.

L said nothing; just crossed the office very slowly. His bare feet were unnervingly silent on the carpet, it was almost as though he floated across the floor, completely stationary except for the muted rhythmic shuffling of his feet. It just made Light realize how easily L could have crept up on him whilst his eyes were closed; strangled him, probably, with those long spidery fingers of his…

Light blindly clutched at the tranquilizer gun sitting behind him on the desk, fingers tightening around its reassuringly hard grip. He knew it would have no effect on L whatsoever if he shot him – since even a round of _real_ bullets hadn't done any harm to him, or to his clothes, apparently – but it made him feel a little more secure just to hold a weapon in his hand.

L stopped a few feet away from him, over to the left, looking down at the floor. Light recognized the rough location of the spot – it was where he'd died, exactly where he had stopped when they'd returned here before, prior to their actual "moving in".

"Or did you just come here to stand there and pitifully attempt to make me feel guilty?" Light bit out in continuation; more to cover up his own anxiety at this situation, to get L to respond, no matter what he said…

L wasn't rising to the bait, however; either completely ignoring Light just to keep him hanging from a wary thread, or simply having no answer to give him. He prodded experimentally at the bit of floor with his foot, then stepped back again, as though he'd been debating standing on it and had changed his mind.

"Hey!" Light snapped; L actually looked up at him, but still didn't utter a sound. "What do you want?" he went on testily.

L gave a small shrug.

"Nothing," he said finally.

His eyes met Light's across the space between them, dark and lifeless to shining and alive.

"Is it," Light said after a long moment, "that you truly don't want anything, or… that you don't _know_ what you want? Life or death…?"

"No." L shook his head, his gaze still locked with Light's. "I didn't say that I didn't want anything. I said that I wanted nothing. It's not the same thing."

Light's eyes narrowed.

"That makes no sense."

L tilted his head.

"What _does_, Light-kun?"

Light opened his mouth to reply, even though he didn't really understand this conversation; but his attention was averted when he saw L's eyes suddenly move away from his, upwards and behind him at the surveillance screens.

It was a fast movement – the dead detective was looking away from Light for only about a second, the tiniest flicker of attention, but it was enough to tell him that something had changed on those screens. Light whipped back to them, tightening his grip on the tranquilizer gun as he did so.

_Yes_.

Another of his fragmented, unearthed memories slid back into place as he recognized the blonde hair and black leather get-up of Mihael Keehl. He was striding across the lobby as though he meant serious business, which Light wasn't surprised by; nor was he surprised by the gun clutched in his hand, probably already cocked and ready to fire.

Light glanced at L, who hadn't moved, but rather was still looking at him.

"Well?" He said; it wasn't really a question, but he felt that it was something he should say.

L appeared to have completely clammed up again, for he gave no answer, verbal or otherwise.

Light said nothing either, gripping the tranquilizer gun tightly as he stepped away from the desk; watching, waiting, anticipating that L would leap at him, block his path, suddenly go for his throat…

L did nothing; his dark eyes just followed Light as he moved, no real menace in them, just an enthralled interest, as though a child who had wound up a toy and was now watching it move, perhaps intrigued as to how far it could go.

Only as Light opened the door did the dead detective suddenly drop his gaze, looking at the space in which he had died once more. Light didn't know why he was so despondent, so neutral about the fates of his own heirs, and it was unsettling –Light felt that he would have preferred it if L was in fact standing in his way, because that was what he had predicted, but the way L was acting, as though he'd _expected_ this, as though he'd…

…_planned it…_

The possibility struck his mind like a jagged lightening bolt from a clear sky, as disturbing as it was unexpected. L couldn't possibly go that far, sacrificing his own protégés for some unseen conclusion. He swallowed hard, fighting off the impulse to go back into the room and demand an explanation; he couldn't have his mind on L right now, not with a murderous "little brother" stalking through his lair. If L wasn't going to interfere, then all the better – it just made this that much easier for him. Besides, this didn't have to be difficult; all he had to do was shoot Mello with a tranquilizer dart before Mello hit him with a real bullet. As it happened, Light was a pretty good shot, and he knew how disarm someone with a gun, if it came down to it. Not to mention the bullet proof vest hugging his chest and his detailed knowledge of the building's layout. It would be easy to ambush the younger man.

Perhaps he had just come to expect that things would be more difficult than need be because of _L_. L always made things complicated for Light – even _killing_ him had been…

Well, no matter. Light knew the pain of losing someone you loved, and so that was why he'd been able to gamble on Mello playing into his hands like this.

Coming like a lamb to the slaughter, so to speak.

(_Just like L_.)

He held the tranquilizer gun up, taut against the suddenly viscous atmosphere; the murderous intent rippling through the air was so thick that he could _feel_ Mello before he heard him. Light's finger curled slowly onto the trigger, adrenaline fizzing through his veins, sharpening his senses until he was hyper aware, every pore vibrating with percipience. He paused at the top of the spiral staircase leading up here; _now_ he could hear the footsteps on it, growing closer, ascending higher. Mello wasn't even bothering to try and hide his presence, each resounding footfall was a purposeful provocation. Light hesitated, surprised not by Mello's boldness, but by his unseen intensity, before he stepped backwards again behind the corner. The angle shielded himself from view, but in this position he could still keep his own eyes firmly fixed on the stairwell.

The footsteps were loud now, and unceasing; like rolling thunder announcing the arrival of a titanic storm. Light swallowed, forced himself to breathe evenly at this critical second…

The gun came up first, its silver barrel nosing unhurriedly around the corner of the stairway. Mello knew what he was doing. Light wasn't fazed by this, but it did up the likeliness that Mello would be able to fire a shot. Still, Light knew better than anyone that it was as much the act as it was the deed itself – the tranquilizer-loaded weapon in his hand didn't _look_ like a tranquilizer gun.

It looked real. It looked like it spewed hollow tipped lead and death. It looked _lethal_.

Mello had made it to the landing, walking steadily forward like a leather-clad shadow before Light stepped out from behind the corner, gun aimed squarely at the center of Mello's back. His movement had been sleek and silent, so it was only the telltale clicking of the hammer into kinetic standby that alerted Mello to his presence.

"Drop your weapon, Mello," he said smoothly.

Mello paused; he didn't drop the gun, rather tightening his grip on it.

"How nice of you to come and greet me," he growled in reply.

"I said drop your weapon."

Mello gave a small snort of derisive laughter; fluidly turning to face Light and raising his own gun again. Light's calm collect was suddenly kicked out from under him as the yawning ring of metal now pointed at him sucked him into a dream so vivid that for an instant he could smell the dank must of the warehouse, and feel the pure sharp rending agony of a bullet as his half-memories slung their ghost limbs into his consciousness...

Through the hazy muffled tongue of déja vu he could hear Mello talking, apparently unaware of the mental homicide he had just experienced…

"…not gonna happen, I came here to blow your fucking brains out, Yagami."

Light swayed, mind churning rapidly to come up with a response while still ushering out the residual memories.

"I'll be the one blowing _your_ brains out if you don't put that gun down," Light snapped, finally feeling his head clear, able to stare down the menacing barrel without his brain going into a recollective fit.

"Go ahead, motherfucker." Mello's eyes darkened, turning into an oil well for the fiery rage twisting his face into a fierce snarl. "You think I care about what you do to me? I'm not afraid of you or your little notebook. I think you know why I've come here to kill you; in fact, I'm sure you planned for this, but either way, your ass is mine. Shoot me if you want." Mello's finger tightened on the trigger. "I'll just take you to Hell _with_ me, Yagami."

Light gave no reply to this, still holding his own gun steady with two hands. Mello might still be able to hit him even if he fired first – was it worth the risk…?

Mello's gaze suddenly darted aside, glancing at something behind Light as his intense concentration was snagged by hooked claws and unable to pull loose for that one critical second—

Light saw the millisecond opening, and didn't hesitate. He squeezed the trigger, felt the weapon buck in his hands, and watched as the dart hit Mello, sinking deep into the chest. He stumbled back a few steps with a snarl, but recovered within a second; effectively ripping the dart out with one hand and lining up his gun with the other. His movements were fast and efficient, not a single moment or motion wasted. The rapid, concentrated ferocity spoke of self-possession to the point of exploding with rage, and with it focused solely on Light, the sedative having no visible effect, he could feel himself stepping back.

However, his retreating foot never even touched the floor before Mello pulled the trigger without a flinch. The shot roared, slamming dead center into Light's chest making him stumble back with a jerk, his flesh screaming from the impact, but there was no penetration. The vest was doing its job. Light was able to stay on his feet with a strangled grunt of pain, despite his entire torso cringing inwards. He lifted his head just in time to see Mello cock the gun and fire a second time.

This time he didn't even hear the gunshot, he only felt the pain bloom instantly across his left pectoral. Still he didn't fall.

Mello saw that, despite Light's obvious pain, he wasn't going down. His dark eyes burning brightly with hatred, he began striding purposefully towards Light, each step accompanied with another deafening round. Light's body was jerked back and forth from the shots, each feeling like a concentrated punch of unimaginable force; but it was not enough to pierce him, not enough to kill. The bullets collapsed on the barrier, melding to the vest in an array of silver spots, haloed by bruising pain.

It was when Mello was only a few feet away, firing nearly pointblank into an exposed and jerking chest, that he realized the bullets weren't entering. He roared in anger, aiming for Light's limbs rather than his protected kill zone, hoping to hit an artery and make the bastard bleed out. But by this point, with his heart pounding, and the sedative finally spreading numbness through his muscles, he could feel the floor start to sway beneath his feet. Air was suddenly thin and unattainable, his vision rippling into jumbled waves of color and warped outlines. Everything was overexposed, indistinguishable, and he could feel the lightheaded fuzz creeping up his brain stem warning him that he was a few seconds away from losing consciousness.

With his last concentrated effort, and his last bullet, he fired at the darkened indistinct form of Light, before his kneecaps liquefied and his mind was blindfolded by the tranquilizer. He collapsed first to his knees and then to his face on the floor of the hallway without seeing if his blind shot had connected.

He didn't hear the harsh yell that was ripped from Light in a fire trail of agony.

"_Ah_!" Light also collapsed, grasped at his left arm where the bullet grazed him, tearing the material of his shirt and spraying blood onto the wall. Hissing in pain, with each frantic breath strained through welded teeth, Light dropped his own gun to clamp his right hand over the wound on his arm to stem the bleeding; glancing first at Mello, motionless on the floor right in front of him, and then back over his left shoulder to see what had distracted him in the first place.

L, standing utterly impassively behind him, his white top and skin flecked with spatters of Light's blood, with his right hand clenched in a fist before him.

Light swallowed a moan and opened his mouth to try words, but language failed him; L said nothing either, simply opening his hand and letting the bullet he'd caught fall with a sharp _clink_ to the floor. He looked briefly at Light, then turned away, still in utter silence, and walked off without a backwards glance at either Light or his fallen heir.

Light watched him go, eyes blurry with reflexive tears; then looked back at Mello. He was sprawled face down, blond hair flared across the floor; his hand was still clenched around the gun. The sedative would have him out for hours, so Light had no fear in ignoring him until he could stop his own bleeding. He couldn't feel it coming out from the wound, but when he looked back down, his entire arm had been painted bright red in that short space of time. He felt nauseas, from the blood, from the pain, and yet he still forced a teeth grinding grin onto his mouth. Despite the wounds, he counted this as a solid victory.

Carefully he ripped the tattered sleeve of his shirt completely off, doing his best not to disturb the lesion. Then, taking one end of the sleeve in his mouth, he wrapped the material tightly around the wound, putting pressure on it. He couldn't help the tremulous whimper that escaped through his clenched teeth as the force made the pain flare up again with a renewed intensity. Light began to shake uncontrollably, making it exceedingly difficult to tie the impromptu bandage. His hand kept slipping from the blood, causing the fabric to loosen; he would then have to re-tighten it, causing yet another sharp stab through his arm. After several attempts he finally was able to tie it, slightly grateful for a practical knowledge of knots.

But the procedure left him trembling, left him crumpled on the floor, wanting to just curl up and wait for the hurt to go away – but he knew that was a luxury he could not afford. Even with his entire upper body radiating hurt, and his arm sending harrowing arrows down the entire limb, he knew he could not lie down. He moaned woefully to himself before slowly rising again; he stepped over the tranquilizer gun, still grasping his arm, and approached Mello cautiously, though he knew that he couldn't be faking it. He bent to pick up the gun, having to pry Mello's fingers away in order to even pick it up. He looked at it, turning it over in his hand before putting on the safety catch and tucking it into his own belt. He then knelt next to Mello, grimacing from the action, and turned him over onto his back to inspect the damage. His nose was bleeding a little – though Light didn't think it was broken – and he would probably have a horrific bruise on his forehead from landing on his face like that, but otherwise he seemed alright.

He got a grip on the blonde and tried heaving him upwards, but the strain on his arms disturbed the still-bleeding bullet wound and Light had to give up, letting him drop back to the floor. Instead he twisted the back of the collar on Mello's leather jacket in his right hand and dragged him down the corridor. There was an elevator on this floor so he didn't have to go far.

After dragging the unconscious Mello out of the elevator, Light dropped him unceremoniously to the floor, not pitying the knot he was probably going to develop on the back of his skull. Light shuffled to the only door on this floor, opening it and jamming it open; then returning to his hostage and pulling him into the room, letting it swing closed behind him.

One of the many spare rooms L had had built into the facility – a simple design, with a bed, wardrobe, desk and en suite bathroom. Quite dusty, but since it had never been used, it had not fallen to the same level of uncleanliness as other parts of the building.

Light gathered his strength, grateful to the endorphins now flooding his blood, making the pain slightly more distant, and succeeded in picking Mello up the few feet necessary to dump him on the bed. The shot to his arm hadn't helped, laced with fire, but it stood that Mello was more robustly built than L, making him heavier. Light took up the handcuffs he'd left in here previous to Mello's arrival, in anticipation of this – two singular standard-sized pairs that he'd gotten from one of the equipment lock-ups – and snapped one cuff of each pair onto Mello's wrists, securing them to opposite bedposts.

Starting to feel a little faint from the blood loss, Light quickly checked Mello's clothing for any other weapons. Using only his right arm, the left one held gingerly to his throbbing chest, he frisked the bound blonde; it almost wasn't necessary because the leather was a snug fit on his lithe body, not very useful for hiding bulky weapons. He found none, but took his phone from his jacket pocket, slipping it into his own. Light took one last look at him, checking the handcuffs again to make sure he couldn't get loose, and then left him, satisfied by how well his kidnapping of Mello had gone.

Once Near was within his grasp, he could kill Mello easily. After all, L was one little brother down already…

Light went back to the office, pulling out the First Aid kit from one of the drawers and opening it on the desk, rifling through its contents and finally surfacing with a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a length of cream gauze bandaging and some surgical tape. He unbuttoned his dark blue shirt and shrugged it off, the material peeling away from his blood-soaked left arm; he then undid the several clasps of the bullet proof vest and lifted it over his head. The bullets were still embedded in its kevlar surface; Mello had shot him seven times in the chest, all of which would have been fatal. He knew that if he cared to look, there would be seven matching bruises covering his chest as well.

He clenched his teeth, and began cutting away the impromptu tourniquet. It fell away, heavy and wet, and Light finally got a good look at the wound to evaluate how bad it was. It wasn't very deep, only a surface wound – a shallow gash plowed through the meaty side of his shoulder. It hadn't done much in the way of muscle damage, but it was still bleeding a lot. He could curse Mello for it, but he knew he was lucky that Mello hadn't managed to hit him anywhere more vital.

Light took the bottle of antiseptic and, before he could talk himself out of it, liberally poured it over the wound. It streaked down his arm, cutting through the blood stains, and bubbling into a white froth at the entry site. His fist tightened spasmodically, and his breath came in shaky gasps as he used every ounce of will power to fight down the scream hammering against his throat. The chemical burned fiercely, reawakening the stripped nerves and causing him to start trembling all over again. He rode it out stubbornly until the bubbles fizzled out, and, using the clean remains of his shirt, he wiped away the excess blood and antiseptic. He then went through the same procedure of bandaging, this time working slowly and methodically with the sterile absorbent bandages, ace wrap, and surgical tape. Once finished, it was a significantly better dressing than the tattered shirt sleeve.

He took twice the recommended amount of painkillers, grabbed the Death Note from the desk drawer, and proceeded through towards the bedroom.

He'd find L later and "deal" with him. The truth was, Light knew he was going to have to resort to giving L a heart to bring him back to life – and effectively wipe his memories. L's impassiveness to this "killing-off-his-heirs" situation disturbed Light immensely, and made him wary of perhaps an ulterior motive. Light couldn't stay awake 24/7 watching Mello, and although L didn't seem particularly interested in helping his heirs, that didn't mean he could be trusted to not let Mello go. As usual, Light could see none of L's hand, and he knew by now that the detective, in both life and death, was not impartial to hiding an ace or two up his sleeve.

And this time the stakes were much higher than the prospect of being the dominant one during their lovemaking.

He stumbled across L, however, by accident; on his way to the bedroom to get a new shirt. He was on the bathroom floor, sitting up against the sink, perfectly still, with his legs loosely pulled to his chest, and still spattered with Light's blood. His eyes were wide and unseeing, gazing up at the ceiling, and he'd clearly had another go at all the cracked mirrors, since all four were now partially smashed out, pieces of cracked, angular silver scattered all over the bathroom surfaces and floor.

Light might have thought he was dead if he hadn't known that he was _already_ dead.

L didn't appear to see him, not sparing him a glance. Again, as before, Light opened his mouth to speak, but could think of nothing to say, and eventually he closed it again in defeated silence. He stepped out of the bathroom, heading towards the bedroom again.

Ryuk was lounging on the bed, his long legs crossed.

"Get into a scuffle?" He asked languidly, pointing at the bandage visible on Light's upper arm as he slipped the Death Note into the drawer at the bedside.

"It's just a scratch," Light replied defensively as he went to the wardrobe and opened it to get a clean shirt. "It was worth it. I got Mello."

Ryuk actually sat up at that statement; visibly, predictably excited.

"He's here?"

Light nodded, selecting a black pinstriped shirt – better to go with dark, in case any blood seeped through.

"Yeah. Two floors up, in one of the spare rooms. He's out of it at the minute – I'll have a little chat with him when he wakes up…"

Ryuk cackled, gleeful anarchy ringing through his voice.

"And here I was, thinking you were getting a bit boring," he said with a chuckle.

Light ignored this "compliment", looking at the Shinigami meaningfully.

"Did you get the heart, Ryuk? I really need it tonight."

"Yeah, yeah, I got it…" Ryuk thumbed at the box sitting on the bedside table. "…And what kind of "need" would that be then, Light?" His grin was syrupy and mocking; if Ryuk had eyelids, Light was sure he would have just winked at him.

"The "Preventing-L-from-freeing-Mello" kind of need," Light spat in reply. "Don't get smart with me, Ryuk."

Ryuk got up with a gamboling roll that was perfectly unsuited for his frame.

"Jeez, you sure treat me with disrespect," he grumbled, and ambled out of the room through the wall, probably to go off and make amusing faces at the captive.

Light gave a snort, buttoning up his shirt; then went to the bedside table, sliding open the drawer to fish out their old original handcuffs with the long chain. He lifted the lid of Misa's jewelry box, quickly checking the grisly contents – shutting it again and picking it up as he headed out of the room.

L had actually moved a little by the time he returned to the bathroom – he was still in the same place, but was now on his knees, hands pressed to the floor, with his dark head bowed, and although there was no sound coming from him, his shoulders were shaking as though he was crying. It was a disquieting milieu to walk in on, muted mirrors and shattered sobs.

Light gripped the box in one hand and the handcuffs in the other, trailing the chain across the floor as he closed in on L; standing before him, towering above him, with his shadow falling impassively over the dead detective's trembling form. Before he could speak, L shifted back, out of Light's shadow.

"You led us all, didn't you, Light-kun…?" L said softly; and then he raised his head, looking up at Light. His obsidian eyes were dry, and there was an odd, sad smile on his pale face. "…You led us all to the slaughter."

L looked down at the floor again, watching Light's reflection multiple times over in the pieces of broken mirror scattered over the floor as he held out the small wooden box.

"No," L said, speaking more to the reflections. "No, I won't take that, Light-kun."

"How do you know what it is?"

L looked up again, this time his expression far more dangerous.

"Don't insult me," he murmured; he got up very slowly, settling into his familiar slouch that left his eye-level lower than Light's, so that his stare was tilted upwards. "Tell me something," he went on, leaning in towards Light, whose grip on the chain tightened. "Why do you chase me like this, Light-kun? Why do you chase the memory of a dead man? When you give me those hearts… it's nothing but a sham, don't you see that? How can I truly be alive when the heart that beats inside me is not my own? You are merely giving life to the dead – you are not reversing time. You cannot make things as they once were."

Light said nothing, but drew the box back to himself as L looked away from him.

"You're afraid, Light-kun," he said quietly. "You're afraid of me, so you want me back to the way I was before you killed me; but then you're afraid to tell the "alive" version of me the truth. That's why you stage these ridiculous set-ups, hoping that I won't notice." L gestured in disgust at the chain. "Whether you still love me or not, that's not the real reason for which you force life back into me. It's because you can use it as a hiding place – a little fairyland where you can just pretend that you never killed me, that you never tore me apart the way you did—"

"I was just trying to _help_ you!" Light cried, interrupting him. "You were… you were so sad, and I thought if you could—"

"I am _sick_ of your lies," L said in a low, cold voice. "Your lies, Light, and your pathetic excuses – not just about me, but about _everything_."

"I'm not lying!" Light wailed desperately, dropping the chain to the floor. "I love you, and you said you believed me, L… You _did_!"

L fell silent for a long moment, perhaps remembering the passionate words in his mind, or perhaps remembering his own death; both inexorably intertwined. Finally he held out his open hand.

"Give me the heart," he said blankly. "I'll let you have your beloved sham version of me on one condition."

"What…?" Light asked breathlessly, still clutching the box.

"You tell me the truth." L almost smiled. "No handcuffs, no lies about where Watari, Misa or the rest of the team are. Nothing." He tilted his head, gauging Light's expression. "You know what I'm asking you to do, don't you? I am, effectively, asking you to _confess_. …I wonder if you'll be able to do it…?"

Light hesitated, then gave a small nod; he didn't have much of a choice. Maybe L was counting on him refusing, but there was the whole Mello situation now…

He started to hand the box over, but held on when L tried to take it.

"It hurts you, doesn't it?" He asked softly, although he already knew the answer. "To come back to life and then die again…?"

"Yes." L nodded expressionlessly. "Very much so. Perhaps then you should make the pain worthwhile."

"But…" Light looked at him desperately. "…What if you don't believe me? It'll be hard to swallow, don't you think?"

"You'll need proof, then." L reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a folded slip of paper, pressing it into Light's hands.

Light let go of the box, unfolding the paper, looking down at in silence; then raising his head and watching as L opened the box to observe Ryuk's usual clumsy butchering – pausing, seeming to hesitate in order to take a steeling breath, before reaching delicately inside and picking up the heart with the tips of his fingers. He let the box drop to the bathroom floor as his already-lifeless eyes took on that glazed clockwork expression and he staggered backwards against the sink as his hand slid up under his top in preparation for forcing it inside his own ribcage.

Light never failed to be bewitched by this – with fairytale elements of its own, there could be no doubt, like the princess awakening from her sleeping death or the beast turning back into a prince, the archetypal transition from one reality to another.

L grabbed blindly at Light as he pushed the severed heart into his chest, taking a handful of his pinstriped shirt in his grip and twisting it as he toppled forwards against him with a crumbly scream. Light caught him around the chest, lowering them both to their knees just as L became a dead weight against him, fainting.

Light knelt there on the floor, holding him tightly amidst the broken mirror and spattered blood from the interior of the jewelry box littering the floor – his eyes on the chain. He admitted it, the chain was a safety net; it had been L's safety net whilst alive, keeping Light close to him no matter what, and Light's safety net when weaving the web of lies designed to trick L into believing that nothing had changed between them.

But… it was also a tangible symbol of the unbreakable bond between them, one that held strong even between the realms of Life and Death. It was what had prevented Light from ever being truly happy again. It was what had dragged L back at all.

Perhaps there would never be a Happy Ever After, but there _was_ a Once Upon a Time – and it was this chain.

And as though to breathe life back _into_ that once Upon a Time, a crimson haze began to appear over L's head, rearranging itself into English letters and a jumble of numbers.

_L Lawliet_

Light looked steadfastly away from it (the evidence that L was alive) and gripped the cuff of his shirt, wiping his own blood on L's face off on it – then looked down at his white top, also sprayed with his blood from the bullet grazing him. Maybe he should take him into the bedroom and at least change his shirt; he knew he was supposed to be "confessing", but he figured it was just impolite to leave L covered in his blood. "Yeah, sorry, you got sprayed with my blood when someone tried to shoot me" wasn't a great conversation-starter…

He picked L up and carried him out of the bathroom – he had warmed up but was still unconscious, though it was easy to carry him, even with a flesh wound, because he was smaller than and not as heavy as Mello. Light kicked the bedroom door closed behind him and went to the bed, lying L down on the sheets – reminded of the time he'd brought him up here after his death, accompanied by Matsuda, and lain him carefully here like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty…

Light went to the wardrobe, rifling through it, thinking dimly it might be interesting to see L in a color other than his usual boring white; maybe grey or blue or Light was sure he had something green in here somewhere… Eventually he went with a black tailored shirt with visible white stitching detail, throwing it down on the bed as he pulled off the blood-flecked white top and shoved it into the top drawer of the bedside table.

He'd forgotten about the hideous criss-cross lacing over L's heart and was horrified by it all over again, quickly pulling the black shirt on and buttoning it over the detective's pale chest so he didn't have to look at the macabre ribbing. It was all very well for L to demand that he tell this ignorant, "sham" version of himself the truth, but Light didn't know how this ignorant, "sham" version of L was going to take… well, _that_, to start with. He'd probably think Light had been harvesting his organs to sell them or something…

L stirred, sitting up and opening his eyes; he blinked his dark eyes at Light, distorting the mirror that had reappeared again as part of the spell…

"Wasn't it morning?" He asked, looking around in bewilderment, and in particular at the window, which was dark with neon Tokyo night. "…I can't have fallen asleep again for this long, surely…?" He suddenly scowled at Light. "Unless Light-kun drugged me again?"

Light said nothing, just gazing at him as he sat on the edge of the bed – doing his best to ignore the crimson halo that spelled out his given name floating dreamily over his head. He didn't _want_ to confess and shatter the only good terms with L he had left, even if it was a lie. He knew that was selfish of him but sham or not, this L was a lot happier. That couldn't be disputed – and at the end of the day, this was no longer about Light's evasion of being caught, his survival method of lying to L to keep himself from the execution chamber. No matter what this L believed, he was powerless. It didn't matter how Light confessed, he could get himself a top hat and cane and sing a showtune about his being Kira – L couldn't arrest him. He had no links, no back-up, and everyone knew he was dead.

Except L himself.

So it wasn't a necessity to lie anymore – it was a choice, and Light's only choice, because his feigned innocence was the only way he could convince L to love him. A fully-realized Kira had no room between them.

But of course L – the dead, "true" version – knew that. That was precisely what he was trying to ruin for Light – it was just his old trick, his forest of thorns to protect himself. Maleficent all over again, his love for Light that made him afraid of him, made him want to hurt him…

He wanted Light to intentionally throw himself into the mercy of those thorns, let the truth bleed him out, and see if he could survive.

"I didn't drug you," Light said softly; he leaned forward, wrapping his arms around L and embracing him tightly, thinking to just hold on to him until he was pushed away. L did, however, let him hold him, resting his chin on Light's shoulder – though he spoke again.

"Then perhaps Light-kun could explain…?" He gave a sigh. "I am growing worried. Perhaps I am ill?"

Light said nothing. He didn't know how to answer him. It wasn't just the incoherent lapses in L's "consciousness" that were unexplainable – there was the shirt, the absence of the handcuffs; and even greater things outside the room. Death and more death. It seemed unavoidable that he would have to tell him the truth, but where to start…? How to tell him that he was already dead, had been dead for over three years in this time, that he was a reanimated corpse with a heart that wasn't his within him?

It simply _couldn't_ be right to hold L in his arms like this – warm, loving, at perfect ease with both the embrace and Light himself – and whisper in his ear that he was his murderer.

Perhaps L would not be surprised by that final part; but still, it was easier and far more desirable to just embrace here, holding the remains of their world – their fairyland – together.

And what was this bed other than their fairyland – the kingdom within which nothing but the two of them, together, as two that loved each other, existed? It wasn't meant to be a place of truth; it had always, _always_ been a place of lies, where Light denied that he was Kira, where _L_ denied that Light was Kira, their fairyland had always been lies, existing on the fake promise of a happy ever after.

Light pushed L down to the mattress again. He realized – L wasn't just asking him to _confess_, he was asking him to destroy their fairyland utterly and irreversibly, to take it to the slaughter completely, to tell him the truth in this room, on this bed, so that there would be nothing left, no ties, no _chain_…

Would that _free_ him? If Light did this, if he broke the fairytale completely, would L finally leave…?

Maybe it was the only thing left to do – maybe that was why L had asked, agreed to take that dimension-rending heart into his body. But then… Light had planned ahead, he had concluded that Near's heart would restore L to life completely, and when this was over, he'd give it to him to have him back properly…

He just held L against the mattress, melding across his curves, unsure of what to do. Confess and risk losing him? Lie and face the wrath of the "dead" version?

He opened his mouth—

"Light-kun," L said, trying to sit up again, "I think—"

Light kissed him – to stop the words, to stop the world falling apart, to stop _everything_. If he just distracted L, if he just stopped him from asking questions then he wouldn't have to answer them; and why should L find this suspicious? It was night, they were in their "kingdom"…

He kept L quiet with the kiss, moving his head to keep their mouths together when he felt him try to break away; running his hands down his body as he squirmed on the sheets beneath him, fingers nimbly twisting the button of the detective's jeans loose, then sliding upwards again to start on the buttons of the black shirt he'd dressed him in…

L planted his palms against Light's shoulders and firmly pushed him away, sitting up to look down at himself – or, specifically, at the shirt the younger man had half-undone, plucking at it incredulously.

"Isn't this yours, Light-kun?" He asked, looking up at Light with gleaming, mistrustful eyes.

"Yes," Light replied sullenly; he'd expected L to notice the shirt, but was pissed that he'd been pushed away mid-undressing him because of it. His distraction of the detective had already been uprooted…

"Look," he spat in continuation, raising both naked wrists. "No handcuffs either."

L glanced briefly down at his own wrists before looking up at Light again with something of a twisted smirk on his face.

"I apologize that Light-kun's very obvious diversion of my attention is not going as planned," he said smoothly. "Perhaps you would like to let me in on the secret, then? No handcuffs, my shirt has magically transformed into yours, and both of these factors have altered themselves in that same space of time that I strangely do not remember." He tilted his head. "Forgive me for automatically presuming you the guilty party, but that does tend to be how things work between you and I, doesn't it?"

Light looked away, having backed off from him quite a bit now. He was kneeling, with his arms cradled helplessly in his lap, utterly torn.

"And what kind of logical answer would you like to hear, then, _Ryuzaki_?" He ground out, still not meeting the detective's reflective gaze.

"Well, it would seem to me that you drugged me again," L replied pleasantly. "Despite your denial of such an accusation, anyway. After putting me to sleep, it is likely that you were able to obtain the key from my person with ease and remove the handcuffs. The only reasoning I can give for the shirt is that you perhaps spilled something on me, and, not wishing me to be cold, very kindly replaced my clothing with a garment of your own."

"Actually, I was just bored of looking at you in that same old white."

"Indeed." L arched an eyebrow. "At any rate, I therefore conclude that Light-kun has taken to drugging me, which is not something that pleases me _at all_, as I'm certain you can imagine."

"I'm sure it doesn't."

"So Light-kun will pay the penalty of being underneath for a full week – seven days, not five." L's eyes narrowed. "And if he _dares_ to do it again, his punishment will be _far_ more sincere."

Light slowly looked at him incredulously. He was surprised at himself, for not noticing it sooner – but that measured nothing compared to his surprise at L.

"…You just excused me," he said, blinking at the detective. "You just made that excuse up for me – the stuff about drugging you and stealing the key and changing your shirt. You didn't even _ask_ me if it was true, if that was what had really happened."

L frowned, as if he hadn't even considered the thought.

"But surely that _is_ what happened, Light-kun," he replied carefully. "There is no other logical explanation."

Light looked away once more – no, it wasn't that. It wasn't that there was no other explanation; it was that L wasn't _looking_ for another explanation. It satisfied him to look no further, to not consider _why_ Light had "drugged him" and freed himself, let alone look for another rationalization that reached the same conclusion.

_I know why you're excusing me – because you don't want to hear the real answer…_

"Yeah," Light replied quietly, studying the carpet. Perhaps it was a subliminal message? "You're right."

"Right in my conclusion or right in saying that there is no other explanation?"

"…Both."

"Where are the handcuffs?"

"In the bathroom." Light distractedly reached out and started to button L's shirt again, seeing that it had begun to slip and reveal a little of that black stitching over his borrowed heart. "I'll… I'll go and get them." He got up and left the room before L could really protest, snatching up the handcuffs by the chain on reaching the bathroom and quickly making his way back to the bedroom.

"Why does Light-kun keep making efforts to escape, I wonder…?" L murmured, reaching for the handcuffs and taking them from Light's hands. "Can it be that he grows tired of my ever-present company, or… is he taking the opportunity to do things incriminating to his plea of innocence…?"

Maybe the question was merely rhetorical – L certainly didn't seem to be expecting an answer from Light, for he wasn't even looking at him. So Light said nothing, merely watched him toying with the silver chain, lost in his idle speculation.

"Well then," L said, glancing up at Light through his hair, "if you're going to be so underhanded, I'll just chain you to something that you can't drug." He snapped one handcuff onto Light's right wrist, then fastened the other around one of the bedposts. He gave the chain a small tug with a playful smile. "There – now you have to stay here, Light-kun."

Light gave a small, defeated sigh.

"Yeah. I guess so…" He looked away again; it was painful to see him so idly happy when he knew he might have to shatter that smile forever.

"What's the matter, Light-kun?" L asked, leaning forward towards him, his eyes wide. He put his hands on Light's shoulders, making him look back at him again. "You seem so… withdrawn. Are you feeling unwell? Are you unhappy?"

"No, I'm… I'm alright."

"Good." L slipped his hands down to Light's chest, placing his palms flat against it as he kissed the younger man's throat; then sliding lower, beginning to undo his belt buckle. "I would hate for you to be unhappy because I have thwarted your plans. I'm afraid it's my job."

Light said nothing; allowed L to push him to the mattress.

"At any rate," L went on, lying on top of him as though he owned him, "I'm glad you're not fighting me. I'm sure you'll agree that your punishment is a fair one, and that aside… I myself am not particularly in the mood to wrestle with you tonight, Light-kun. The lovemaking need not be aggressive – if you're nice and calm, it can be gentle."

Well, what was there to do? Light was no longer leading the dance. What would L – the other L – have wanted, for him to cry that he was Kira, right here and now? Light had always considered it easy to allow L to know that he was Kira, that all he had to do was merely stop lying. But it wasn't that easy, not in the midst of this mutual understanding, the bridge between them that weaved Light's lies and L's suspicions together, because if L no longer directly asked him if he was Kira, then Light didn't _have_ to lie – all he had to do was not tell him the truth.

And if there no was reason _to_ lie, there was really no reason to tell the truth, either.

The lovemaking _was_ gentle – gentle, and very quiet. They committed to it intertwined, with Light on his back underneath, one hand in L's ebony hair and the other resting on the small of his back; and his face pressed against the detective's throat so that he couldn't see the tears.

The last time he'd had L back like this, he'd cried with happiness; but this time they were merely real tears, shed in sorrow. He'd realized something now – _felt_ something, in the course of that lovemaking. It had always been there, he suspected, or, at least, it had been there that last time, that _wonderful_ time, but he'd been too happy to notice it. It wasn't the way it _felt_, because it felt the way it always had, a warm, delirious cocktail of pleasure mixed with pain, of love dashed with lust and need and with an undercurrent of hatred and rivalry…

It was just that he now understood what L – the other, _real_ L – had meant.

This was a sham. To force life into L's corpse wasn't the same thing as bringing him back to life. It didn't change anything – it just brought him into a world he wasn't supposed to be in. It didn't rewrite what had already happened, altering it so that he had never died. This L… didn't love him. He loved the version of Light from three years ago; and in a lot of ways, that Light was dead now too, that eighteen year old boy with no memories of being Kira…

L was right. It couldn't go on like this. Telling this L the truth was the only way forward. L had to love him for what he was, not for what he had once been. He had to love him despite everything—

_The way the other one did._

Light sat up in bed, looking down at L curled up under the sheets next to him. Light himself was naked, but L was only missing his jeans, still with his boxers on and the shirt covering his butchered chest. He fingered the bandage wrapped around his upper arm, stemming the blood flow. L had said nothing about it, maybe so lost in the act that he hadn't noticed…

But it didn't explain why he had overlooked the obvious bruising on his chest, sore spots now sporting an unhealthy bluish purplish color.

The younger man gathered his clothes and underwear and pulled them on, then reached over L and silently winched the bedside drawer open, slipping out the key to the handcuffs and unlocking the one on his wrist—

L grabbed his wrist, making him jump with fright.

"And where do you think you're going now?" He snapped, snatching the key from Light's fingers.

"Nowhere," Light replied, trying to pull his wrist free from L's grip. "Should have known… you weren't asleep…"

L's dark eyes narrowed as he sat up.

"Light-kun, I'm not going put up with this," he said coldly. "These handcuffs are on for a reason, for your benefit just as much as mine—"

"Because you think I'm Kira."

"Because I _suspect_ that you _might_ be—"

"Well, you're right." Light said it quickly; then took another deep breath. "You're right, L. I _am_ Kira."

L stared at him, struck silent; he let go of Light's wrist almost absently, blinking at him.

"Why do you seem so surprised?" Light asked bitterly. "Isn't that why you put the handcuffs on in the first place?"

"…I'm surprised… that you confessed, Light-kun." L looked down at the sheets; then clenched his fists. "No, wait… I can't just take it for granted that you are Kira, no matter my suspicion of both you and Amane as the first and second Kiras. The truth is that we know that Kira can control people before he kills them." He looked up at Light again, brain filling with theories that could explain and excuse once again. "That could be happening to you, to force you to confess to being Kira—"

"Oh, so now when I confess, you don't even _believe_ me?" Light snapped.

"_Why_ did you confess?" L pressed, leaning in towards Light, his dark mirror-mirror eyes gleaming and metallic. "There is no reason that I can think of for why it would be beneficial to you to confess to your being Kira – _if_ that is the truth. This is not the same as you saying, as you have before, that you _think_ you _might_ be Kira."

"Do you want the truth or not?!" Light cried in exasperation.

"I can't accept you saying you are Kira as the truth any more than I can accept you denying you are Kira as the truth. There is no proof for either statement." L's eyes darkened. "Don't you see that? Even if you are Kira and are now really and truly admitting to it, it doesn't mean anything. I can't prove that you said it, and I can't prove your guilt." He gestured vaguely at the walls. "I had the cameras in here turned off a long time ago."

"Proof?" Light echoed. "Okay, I'll prove it to you." He leaned over the bed and pulled the drawer open again, tugging out the Death Note and shoving it at L. "There's your proof. That's how I kill."

L looked at the notebook, running his fingers over the cover and the white kanji adorning it. He opened it, looking at the names neatly written on every page, filling almost every blank inch of paper, written in both Japanese and English.

"I… don't understand," L murmured, flipping through the notebook. "This is just a list…"

"It's called a Death Note," Light said. "It was dropped by a Shinigami to Earth. If you know a person's face and true name, you can write their name down in this notebook and they'll die of a heart attack."

"Die of a… heart attack?"

"You've seen one before," Light said, his voice softer. "You just don't remember…"

L threw the notebook on the floor angrily.

"You can't truly expect me to _believe_ this, Light-kun?!" He spat. "I agree that the way Kira kills is somewhat… supernatural, but writing a name down in a notebook…?"

"Do you want me to prove it?" Light asked, picking the Death Note up again. "Pick someone, L. Someone famous. A criminal, whatever you want. I'll kill them any way you want me to."

"Don't make sick jokes, Light-kun," L replied coldly. He retrieved his jeans and pulled them on, then went into his pockets. "Excuse me, I'm going to call Watari. Whether you truly are Kira or are just deluded, I don't think I can handle you by myself anymore…"

Light watched him searching his pockets for his phone, holding the notebook close; fully prepared for L's head snapping up to fix him with a glare.

"Where's my phone?" He demanded.

"I don't know. I didn't take it."

L checked his pockets again, then finally held out his hand towards Light.

"Then give me yours," he said impatiently.

"I don't have it."

L's eyes darkened.

"Why do I get the feeling that you're just jerking me about here, Light-kun?" He hissed. "Very well, then we'll just go and see him personally—"

"There _is_ no Watari, L." Light breathed it out exhaustedly. "…He's dead."

L stopped, falling silent again.

"Dead," he echoed, his voice almost absent. "Watari is dead."

"Yes."

"You killed him, Light-kun."

"No."

"I don't understand… No, I don't _believe_ you." L stood up, glaring at Light. "Have you gone _mad_, Light-kun? Perhaps you are ill, with your talk of being Kira and notebooks that kill and Watari being dead when logically there is no way that—"

He stepped backwards on this and interrupted himself with a little cry as he crumpled, collapsing. He rolled onto his back and propped himself up on his elbows.

"What the hell have you _done_ to me?!" He demanded furiously.

"I think I understand now," Light said calmly, not really answering him, completely ignoring the confused anger. He unfolded his legs and stepped gracefully down from the bed, crossing towards the fallen L. "I think I know why you can't walk."

Light sank down on top of him, straddling his abdomen, the way L had done often to him, with the Death Note still clutched to his chest.

"You're a sham," he said, the words falling like lead from his mouth as he blindly stepped past the point of no return. "I think, without a heart, you're something of a "guest" in the world of the living, so you are able to walk, but _with_ a heart… you are not dead, but neither are you truly alive. I think that's what it is, L. You're not dead enough to be a guest in our world, but you're not alive enough to be a part of it. You can't walk upon the Land of the Living."

"What are you talking about, Light-kun?" L spat, grabbing Light's wrists.

"I'm talking about the fact that you're dead too, _Ryuzaki_." Light broke from his grip and grabbed L's chin to force him to look up at him as he started to struggle. "You're dead. I murdered you three years ago. I don't know why you can't remember it when you're like this. You died on 5th November, 2004, along with Watari, both by heart attacks instigated in the Death Note by the Shinigami Rem to protect Misa."

"Three years… November…?" Now there was a hurt panic in his eyes, unable to process the words being dropped on him. L shook his head free from Light's grasp. "You're talking nonsense, Light-kun. It's not _even_ November yet. My birthday is on Halloween and it hasn't even been _that_ yet—"

"Yes, it has. This is December 2007. You've been dead, L. That's why there are blackouts in your memory, why you can't walk, why you have no phone…"

"I don't remember dying. I don't even remember my birthday. Don't lie to me like this, Light-kun. It's extremely insulting."

"I know you don't remember it." Light gave a sigh, looking away briefly. "…_I wish you did_."

"Why would you-?" L cut himself off, heaving at Light. "No, I don't believe you. This is ridiculous." He shoved Light off and sat up, looking at him warily.

"I-I'll prove it…!" Light went into his shirt pocket and pulled out the folded piece of paper the other version of L had given him. He shoved it into L's hand, closing his thin fingers around it. "Here, this… this is what killed you…"

L carefully unfolded the paper; his dark eyes widening as he read the words scrawled on it in English, by a dying Shinigami's hand—

_L Lawliet_

"My name…" L whispered, more to himself, slowly tracing the lines on the paper as if he could not believe they were real; unaware that he was wearing those same eight letters like a crown.

"Your name," Light replied softly. "L Lawliet. She was a Shinigami, she could see your name and lifespan…"

"Watari… was the only person who—" L stopped again abruptly, tearing the piece of paper in half and in half again, and then in half again and again until he'd shredded it to confetti, which fluttered to the bedroom floor like snow. "That proves nothing," he said savagely, glaring up at Light again.

"Quillsh Wammy," Light said. The words kept coming, he couldn't stop now, couldn't slow down and make L understand. All he could do was overwhelm him with evidence. "Watari's true name—"

"_Stop_ it, Light-kun!" L had grabbed his own shoulders, as if trying to hold his internal world together as Light ripped it at the seams. His shaking fingers dug into his skin through the black fabric of his borrowed shirt, and his breath was now coming in shallow pants. "Why are you doing this? What's your reason for this now?"

"Because I can't lie to you anymore!" Light burst out. "I thought it would be enough to have you like this, to keep your own death a secret from you, to just try and live in that little fairytale land we created, but I can't… It's worthless if you only love who you _think_ I am, L. …And it's just as pointless to love you when you have no memory of what I've done to you, no reason to hate me…"

"I don't want to hear any more of this." L said it dismissively, looking away from Light.

"…You don't believe me, do you?"

"I have no reason to. My true name on a piece of paper is not proof of my death."

"Fine then." Light got up, dropping the Death Note, and grabbed L by the collar of his shirt, dragging him across the floor to the dresser amidst his struggles and protests; then grasped him under his arms and hauled him to his feet, putting him face-to-face with the mirror over the desk. He was draped over L, chest to back; it would have been a sensual position if not for the reality-shattering words that were being hissed into unwilling ears.

"You want real proof, L? _Here_." Light reached around him, both hands digging into the half-buttoned opening, hesitating only a fraction before wrenching his hands apart, tearing the shirt wide open. Buttons skittered off, and L's pale chest was suddenly bared. He shoved the detective in the back, pushing him closer to the mirror.

"It's as I said," Light said venomously, watching L slowly bring one hand shakily up towards the stitching over his heart, his expression utterly horrified. "Your heart was ruined when you died. Maybe you don't even _have_ one anymore, that would make sense, I suppose… So to come "back to life", you need the heart of another, to replace your own."

"You… this can't be…" L ran his fingers over the lacing; then plucked at it more aggressively, trying to undo it.

"Don't!" Light grabbed his hands to make him stop. "Don't do that, you'll hurt yourself…!"

L's fighting spirit returned to him as he slammed a sharp elbow into Light's gut, knocking him backwards and away from him; then got his fingers under the knot of the black lace and pulled it undone—

His eyes widened and glazed over, and then he collapsed forwards, hitting the desk face-first and sliding off it onto the floor in a limp heap.

"L!" Ignoring the pain in his abdomen, Light knelt down beside L, reaching down for him; though he sharply withdrew his hand when L started to move again, rising to his hands and knees.

His right hand was clutching at his heart.

"…_I remember_," he whispered, not really addressing Light, though he turned towards him, kneeling up. Through his fingers Light could see blood seeping from the wound that the lacing usually kept closed. "You kept your promise," he went on, tilting his head as he now spoke directly to the younger man, who had shrank back from him. "I died… in your arms… like I asked…"

L dipped his head, still clutching his bleeding heart, his other arm wrapped underneath his ribcage, black shirt torn and open, his shoulders shaking as they had been in the bathroom, but—

Light saw the spatters hit the carpet. He really _was_ sobbing.

Something he was only capable of as a human.

"You remember," Light said softly. He reached out, placing his hands gently on L's quivering shoulders. "…Yes, you died in my arms. Of course I kept my promise."

L gave a hiss and pulled back away from him.

"Don't touch me…!" He spat, not raising his head.

"I…" Light reached for him again desperately. "No, you said you remembered…! Don't hate me, L. Please, _please_ don't hate me…!"

"What reason do I have… to love you still, Light-kun?"

"Because I'm the reason you're here!" Light cried frantically. "You said it yourself, that we're chained together no matter what, you and I, L…!" He grabbed urgently at the open shirt. "Please… I love you, _please_… _don't hate me_…"

"What do you want from me, Light?" L asked, raising his head. "What more can I give you? You've taken everything from me – my love, my title, my life… I can give you nothing else."

"Love me," Light gasped, suddenly underwater, desperately grabbing at air bubbles that dissolved between his fingers. "Love me as you always have—"

"I can't."

He couldn't breathe.

"_Please_—"

"How _dare_ you beg me for sympathy after everything you've done!" L blazed, suddenly grabbing Light by the throat with both hands. "What do you want from me? Forgiveness? Love? Empathy? I can give you none of those, Light Yagami, because you don't deserve them!"

"I know I don't!" Light wailed, trying to pry L's hands from his neck. "That's why… I need them from you!"

L crushed his throat harder for a moment more; then released him, letting him crumple, coughing, on the bedroom floor.

Even when he was released, he could not breathe.

"_Please don't hate me_…" Light wept, curling up and burying his face in the crook of his elbow.

"Please don't love me," L replied softly, bowing his head again. "I don't want your love, Light."

And he drowned.

Light raised his head a little, wiping his eyes on his shirt sleeve; then slowly got to his knees, then his feet, slowly crossing the floor to the Death Note, picking it up and going to the bed with it. He took a pen from the desk drawer and opened the notebook—

"As I expected," L said, looking up at him through strands of ebony hair, his mirror-mirror eyes gleaming. "When I don't fit into your world, you erase me from it, Light-kun."

Light ignored him, writing his name down in firm, quick strokes; he was dying already, he reasoned. The blood seeping from between his stained fingers, surely that was an indication that he was dying anyway, that the heart Light had given him couldn't last much longer now that he'd undone the cord binding it into his body.

In the seconds that remained, L only stared at him across the room, his expression an unreadable half-smile even as the numbers over his head started decreasing as Light watched them – though his breath stuck in his throat when his already-destroyed heart caved in under the attack Light had wrought on it, blood spurting from the wound and spattering on the floor.

When his eyes closed and he fell to the bedroom floor with a final, quiet sigh, Light put the Death Note back into the drawer and calmly got up, leaving the bedroom.

He came to the bathroom, stepping across the tiles littered with broken mirror; looking around at what was left of the four mirrors still on the walls. Lots of Lights, tiny, distorted…

_In pieces._

Ironic, perhaps, that _L_ had been the one to break these, to throw the bits all over the floor—

Because it was only L who rendered Light himself in pieces.

It was true. Why was it that Light Yagami – _Kira_ – was calm and collected when dealing with others, able to smooth-talk and manipulate, turn on the charm or the temper to get what he wanted, able to out-scheme and outwit everyone around him, get away with absolute, literal _murder_…?

Yet the moment it came to L, he fell apart. He changed his mind, he aborted carefully-laid-plans, his calm and collected mask fell away and shattered completely, leaving him bare and vulnerable before the detective. He could kill one of L's heirs without batting an eyelash, knock out and chain up another of them with even a smile on his face—

And then he threw himself at L's feet, a weeping wreck, and begged him for love and sympathy.

…Was this what it had come down to? Was that all he cared about now – making L love him?

_("Please don't love me," he'd said. "I don't want your love, Light.")_

Losing it. Was he going mad? Completely_ insane—_

His body shuddered as he leaned up against the sideboard, wracked with dry sobs that left him short of breath. His fingers closed around a long shard of mirror lying next to the sink, then relaxed again—

"Light-kun." L had appeared in the doorway to the bathroom; shirt still open to reveal the blood staining his chest, the cord laced up again properly.

The name and lifespan had vanished again.

"I did everything you asked!" Light cried, not turning to him. "Everything I could! It… it wasn't enough for you!"

"I—"

"You told me not to love you! You said you didn't _want_ me to love you!" Light swayed a little, steadying himself by grabbing the sink. "…What can I do, L?" He whirled to face him, breathing heavily. "I know, that thing you wanted… the thing you said you couldn't ask me for. What was it? I'll give it you. Whatever it is, I'll give it to you, L."

L's dead eyes darkened.

"Don't play games like this, Light-kun," he said warningly.

"You still won't tell me. Fine." Light groped behind him, reaching for the shard of mirror, desperation and helplessness driving him to the absolute edge. "Something else, then. I know what else you wanted…"

"Don't… _Light_!" L stepped forwards, reading what Light was about to do a moment too late; the younger man had already lifted the piece of mirror, swinging his arm like a pendulum until there was no more space left, and the mirror merged into yielding flesh. The shard which had always seen truth from L's eyes was now being used to deny truth in Light's. It pierced him.

A mile-long spike of pain lanced through Light's skull, and the sickening scream that seared his throat wasn't even a summary of the sensation. Blood sprayed onto the bathroom floor as he staggered, his hand convulsing and then losing its grip on the shard; he stumbled forwards blindly, caught by L, who lowered him to his knees, even as the first scream of agony was still dying in his throat.

Light grabbed at L's borrowed shirt, twisting the fabric in his fists as he gave a shuddering gasp of pain, blood dripping from his blinded eye down the piece of mirror still lodged there onto L's jeans.

"What the hell are you _thinking_?" L hissed furiously at him; the words were distant, muffled by the corrosive agony eating away at his senses. He wasn't screaming anymore, or more accurately, he _couldn't_. His jaw had been petrified into place, mimicking a silent shriek, and the only raw splinters of a whimper rounding off into shock could be heard, hammering uselessly against the back of Light's teeth.

L was shrugging out of the black shirt as he spoke, snatching it up when it was off and forcing as much of it as he could fit into Light's open mouth to stop him from biting his tongue when he pulled the piece of mirror out. He grabbed a handful of Light's hair to stop him pulling his head away and gripped the shard, hearing Light make a low keening noise, muffled through the fabric in his mouth.

The piece of mirror hadn't actually gone into Light's eye, but rather was jammed into the socket underneath the eyeball. He'd probably blinded himself anyway, but the damage could have been worse, even though there would probably be miniscule pieces of glass left in the wound after the shard was removed – so much messier than doing it with a knife. And this was all that could be done, at any rate. L couldn't take him to a hospital; he had absolutely no means of doing so…

Light wailed again as L slid the shard out of his bleeding eye, throwing it to the bathroom floor; then he rose, taking the shirt from Light's mouth and going to the sink with it, leaving Light a quivering twitching heap on the floor, gasping in mingled agony and shock. He ran one of the sleeves under cold water for a few moments, then folded it and came back, pressing it harshly against Light's wounded eye.

He was trying to stop the bleeding; even if the agony of pressure was enough to further splinter Light's mind, he knew that L was helping. Acting.

"Come on," L said emotionlessly, pulling Light up around his chest and forcing him to walk, though he had to half-drag him to the bedroom. Light stumbled as the vision in his undamaged eye started to grow unfocused, doubling and tripling through the warped lens of pain. L pushed Light onto the bed. "Stay there, and hold that to your eye to stop the bleeding," he continued flatly. "I'll go and get a bandage."

Light didn't have much of a choice, sitting on the edge of the bed, shivering with how sick with pain he felt, clutching the wet shirt to his eye.

Losing it. He _must_ be going mad; completely insane, because he didn't know _why_… why he'd…

Well, to make L love him. To _beg_ him to love him.

L came back with the same first aid kit Light had raided earlier, sitting properly next to the younger man and opening it on his lap. He didn't say anything as he went through it, lifting out a thick cotton patch and another length of gauze bandaging in his peculiar, familiar way.

Light didn't say anything either, rocking forwards and backwards slightly to try and ease the pain he'd stupidly inflicted upon himself.

Neither of them said anything as L took the shirt from him, wiping his face and eye clean as best he could, before placing the cotton pad over his eye and then wrapping the bandage over it to keep it in place. Light knew that he must be going into shock, because even though the movement caused more lava to spew from his socket, he couldn't move or make a sound. He could only emit a tiny whimper, and even that was clamped down on by immobility. His rigid catatonic motionlessness made it easier for L to work, and he was soon ripping tape and securing the bandage. He'd done it diagonally, so that it only covered the damaged eye and sat mostly under his fringe so as not to obscure the vision of his working right.

"If you're lucky, you'll only lose some movement in the eye you damaged," L said after he'd finished bandaging Light. "Unlucky, and that eye will go completely blind. It's too early to say at the moment."

Light didn't answer. Couldn't answer.

"Here." L had a syringe of some kind, filled with a clear liquid – he pushed the plunger up until a little of that liquid squirted from the needle. Light numbly hoped that whatever it was, it was strong… The minute spike of metal slide into the crease at his elbow, immediately burning his veins.

Light still said nothing, still didn't move. L eventually dragged him across the bed until a blanket could be flung over him.

L settled up against the headboard in his usual strange sitting position, wrapping his arms around his knees.

Staying. He was staying, to make sure Light was alright.

"Please don't hate me, L," Light whispered, finally speaking through the sticky webbing in his throat.

This time L said nothing.

—

He was still there in the morning.

In exactly the same position, looking at something across the room that wasn't truly there; he was wearing his white top again to hide the macabre stitching, inexplicably clean of blood.

His entire skull throbbing with pain that rippled from his damaged eye, Light looked up at L with his remaining one, the bright sienna of it gleaming feverishly.

"Do you hate me?" Light asked softly, reaching for him.

L glanced at him, both of his eyes black and lifeless, restored by death.

"No," he said.

* * *

**Narroch: **Ah. I'm so tired now, it's not even funny... Physically, and mentally, this chapter was extremely draining to write. Poor Mello... Poor L... Poor Light... (incoherent)

**RR:** I know, right? ;) I think this was the most difficult chapter to write – for me, anyway (although Narroch seems to share those sentiments). It was tricky in a physical sense (like Light's whole Kidnap Mello Operation) as well as the whole thing with Light confessing to being Kira and the resulting eye-stabbity… Ironically, some of you said you wished L _had_ gouged Light's eyes out a few chapters back. Well, now Light has gone crazy, and did it himself… Ooh la la.

**Narroch: **Here is something random. I really wanted a tumbleweed to bounce through on the gunfight. Totally did... too bad they were inside... Oh, and neither of us have any personal experience with firearms... so everything gun related was dug up on Wikipedia. I hope it is accurate. Oh... I am so tired... My eyes ache. Ouch. Next chapter is going to be worse. (or better?) Move over Light, my eyes will be bloodshot too! Oh I am so lame... This is what happens when I don't get enough sleep...

**RR: **Uh, this is just some general stuff: Our forum is still open (and has been quite active recently! There have been some… _interesting_ discussions, let's say… And L has been (un)officially renamed Billie-Joe Lawliet for now… So come check it out! :D); we have some new fanart over on DA; and there are now two versions of RileyKitsune's 'Carry Me Down' _Poison Apple_ AMV, because she remade it…

Lastly, has anyone heard anything about the new _Death Note_ project? It's apparently called _L Reborn_ and is some anime thing (probably an OVA) about L… coming back to life or something. Maybe using the Death Eraser thing from the pilot? I dunno. I can't find very much information on it, it's just that it was mentioned on DA's LxLight Club… O.o

**Narroch: **To all our fans, and reviewers, our heartfelt gratitude is given to you. Thankyou so much for your support and continued readership...ness... Ah, whatever, I LOVE YOU GUYS!!

RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx

P.S: Not that I'm plugging for Viz Media or anything (har har), but if you buy the US version of Volume 6 of the _Death Note_ anime, you get a free sticker of Light. Mine is now on my laptop. Bet he wouldn't look so pleased with himself if he knew what I was doing to him on the other side of that screen…


	28. Beauty of the Beast

Well, well, well. If you've been with us right from Chapter One, _Aurora_, you may have suspected that we would update today – for that first chapter of _Poison Apple_, named after Sleeping Beauty herself, was posted on 1st October, 2007.

And here we are, exactly a year later. Still not finished. Rawr.

We're getting there, we're getting there… In fact, after this chapter, there will be only _three more_!!1!!111!!

Oh well, about time. It's all going out of the frying pan and into the fire, anyway… :)

Huge thankyou to: **blondevil, KiraXsama, Lostpharoah, Akany, xxxyuniexxx, Jungle John, Synonymous Brian, Star Jinin, kitsunechibiko, writer'sblock, L Ninja, Scripta Lexicona, ObsidianEmbers, Another Liar, kawaiinami, tsuki aoi usagi, Faceless Idol, Hikari Daeron, JunkyardJester, Liviania, AccordingtoMel, jesus-of-suburbia2o2o, Tanka, Silverfox, Lawliet's Angel, Windearth, Shikirou, ayachan, yellowrose87, Feline Jay, KhaosKat, Deus3xMachina, LawliPop, dreamsofpalmtrees, Tanny-san, Shadowsole, Kagome-chan LP, ****XxxIchigoBeyondxXx, Feline Jaye, LawlietIsJustice, Anna, Ti, PedoBear, badwolf.5, No Shaking Throne, Amy-2609, threehoursofsleep, ddz008, Moonlit Mid-Nite, rain angst, yourholiness, Ash, Kai Mine, Cween Almond, OneWhoSitsWithTheTurtles, narni4eva, The Sacred Pandapuff, Tobi Tortue, AshesOverDiamond, infinite.and.loud, TheQueenOfMediocrity, Layalas, BakayaroManiac, Someone Without an Account,** **Nejilovesyaoi, daxterandboxer, cherryi, Nardaviel, Celeste Goodchild** and **isamu-michi!**

Oh, yeah… Remember I said about something called _L Reborn_ last time? Yeah. Forget I said it. Apparently it's a bunch of crap and isn't real. Sorry to get your hopes up. **LawlietIsJustice** very kindly put me straight about its sad non-existence…

Still, that's what fanfiction is for!

(The name of this chapter is taken from the Nightwish song _Beauty of the Beast_ - which in turn was apparently inspired by the fairytale _Beauty and the Beast_. We've mentioned the phrase "beauty of the beast" a few times without actually ever saying it's a song, but... it is.)

Beauty of the Beast

Reality was drawn through a sieve, and through the day only snippets of sensation could pass.

Once, there was a swath of golden sunshine on the wall. Later on, an endless dark blue across the ceiling. At one point he could feel a boiling droplet of sweat roll slowly, slowly down. And a high-pitched whine followed by the gentle brushing of fingers (_oh cold, so cold_) across his forehead was present at some point.

But beyond those unelaborated esthesis, there was numbing disconnect. He lay there, present without presence, an eye without an I, and let time layer itself like a hand slowly, repeatedly, dipping string into blue wax. And though the drugs and the pain kept him from dreaming, he could still feel a heated swirling giddiness in his sleep. Once he mistook it for nausea, and tried to roll over hoping to find an edge, only to realize that a hand was holding him still, and no, it's not vomit, but oh that hand is wonderful, even if it does feel of frostbite.

Even in his fitful sleep, Light was keeping time with his heartbeat. And when he awoke, a tiny crack of a smile pulled at his mouth, because L was _still_ there, and even though he was getting up and shuffling away, Light knew that proved he was always _going_ to be there.

—

"What the hell happened to _you_?" It was the first thing Ryuk said as Light came into the office in a not-quite-straight line; referring, of course, to the bandage sloping diagonally over his left eye.

Light ignored him, more focused on the effort it took to get to the chair at the mainframe. His body felt alien to him, never before in his life had he experienced such bone-deep weakness. The pain from his chest and arm had seeped into the rest of his body, making all his muscles ache wearily, while the still white-hot lead rimmed around his damaged eye kept his head in a constant standstill. Any sudden movement caused the wound to flare so brightly that he was momentarily blinded, unable to even think.

It was the mental interference that bothered him more than anything else. In this sort of game he could not afford to lose his train of thought, not matter how much pain he was in. So he moved as little as possible, and kept his one working eye in a straight stare. He weaved his way to the computer chair, and settled into it with a small groan, his palm massaging his forehead as he put the Death Note he'd been carrying down on the desk before him.

"Hey!" Ryuk said, floating in front of him and waving his long arms. "Light! Don't ignore me!"

"Go _away_, Ryuk," Light moaned under his breath, not sparing him even a glance.

"Not until you tell me what happened," Ryuk hooted, getting right up in Light's face to try make a damage report. "Did you get into another fight with your vengeful corpse of a boyfriend or did you just walk into a door?"

"Shut up."

"You should report domestic violence, you know."

"_I said shut up!_" Light screeched; then cringed inwardly with a sharp gasp. The outburst had slung little barbed wires through his skull, catching and tearing through his eye socket. He clutched at his damaged eye as he rocked forwards a little, internally cursing the double-edged sword of medication. Too strong and he couldn't get out of bed, not strong enough and he was a helpless victim to pain. Not to mention the strange aftereffects, the buzzing in his muscles and the swelling in his throat, both of which he was still feeling now. He gritted his teeth, holding himself rigid as he wait for the throbbing to go away before he spoke again. "It's got _nothing_… to do with you…" he panted in continuation, "so mind your… own damn business, Ryuk!"

Ryuk shrugged, rummaging under the feathery plume at his left shoulder and fishing out an apple, which he bit into.

"But I can't help but take delight in this, Light," he reasoned through a mouthful of apple, making Light look up at him with his one working eye, still gleaming with a coat of fever glaze. "Your decline is – and always has been – intriguing."

"My… decline…?" The words fell numbly from his mouth, uncomprehending.

"Yeah. See… it's probably something you wouldn't notice yourself, but…" Ryuk scratched at his face with a clawed finger thoughtfully. "…How can I put it? It's like… the very _moment_ that detective showed up and challenged you, you started changing."

"Excuse me?" Light pressed coldly, his fingers tracing the edge of the pad over his ruined eye – it was beginning to get damp and sticky.

"It's true." Ryuk deftly tossed his half-eaten apple from his right hand to his left. "When you first picked up that notebook, you were obsessed with creating your "perfect world", but the moment that L guy challenged you, you started becoming obsessed with beating him, using your 'make-the-world-a better-place' campaign as only a means to an end so that you could confront him as Kira. Then, after much scheming, you finally got to meet him – even become "friends" with him—"

"Ryuk, that's enough."

"—Well, I was still hanging around you then. Maybe you didn't really consider yourself "friends" with him at that point, but…" Ryuk grinned broadly. "…Even though he was your enemy, you kind of _liked_ him, didn't you?"

"Ryuk, that isn't—"

"—And then Misa was captured and I remember Rem threatening to kill you if you didn't do something about it," Ryuk snickered delightedly. "I'd be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy that, Light, but of course you came up with a clever little plan the way you always do. Unfortunately it meant I couldn't hang around you for quite a while, being that you no longer owned a Death Note, but no matter, because when I was finally summoned back to you through Misa…" Ryuk started to giggle cruelly. "…What did I find before me but a Light Yagami who had fallen in love while I was away – and _in love with his mortal enemy_, at that!" The Shinigami finally burst out laughing, the irregular, hiccoughing sound of it appalling as it echoed off the walls of the otherwise-silent office. It reverberated in Light, grating and scraping away at the thin layer of sanity he still retained, threatening to dig straight to the quick with his mocking truth.

"It's not funny!" Light blazed, standing up; too quickly, for he swayed and had to grab at the desk to steady himself as vertigo and blood loss tied his muscles into unresponsive knots.

"_Look_ at you!" Ryuk cackled. "Look at what you've become, Light! You're a complete _wreck_! I'd tell you to get a grip, but I think it's too late for that now. You've killed everyone around you, even your own father, and your little love affair? Not gonna have a happy ending, let me tell you now. How do you expect to win back someone you murdered because they were in your way? Besides, love between the living and the dead?" Ryuk snorted. "Don't be ridiculous, Light. I thought you were smarter than _that_…"

"Ha, but you're wrong!" Light said, suddenly revealing an unhinged smile of his own. "You're _wrong_, Ryuk! He _does_ love me!"

"Oh? And I suppose that's why he took your eye out?" Ryuk smirked. "You humans…"

"He didn't! He didn't touch me. I did it myself!" Light said triumphantly.

Ryuk's tuberous yellow eyes ogled at him; then he burst out with his gnawing laughing all over again.

"I rest my case, Light!" He gasped out. "I'd ask you if you'd gone insane, but I think you've already answered that."

"He was kind to me," Light pressed; he gestured towards the oozing bandage over his left eye. "He did these for me, and he sat with me all night to make sure I was okay!" He leaned towards Ryuk, swaying slightly again. "You're _wrong_, Ryuk, you see? I still love him and he still loves me. It doesn't matter that he's dead – but I have an idea of what to do about that, anyway. I'll just get him a permanent heart and he'll come back to life for good. It's a perfect plan."

"And you think that'll work?" Ryuk asked in disinterest, finishing the core of his apple with a relished crunch.

"Of course it will. Why wouldn't it?"

Ryuk shrugged, grinning; juice dripping between his teeth.

"So where are you going to get this permanent heart?" He asked lazily.

"From Near."

"And you don't think that will make him a bit angry with you?" Ryuk pointed out innocently. "Killing all his little heirs, I mean?"

"He won't need them." Light sank back into his chair. "He'll only need _me_."

Ryuk crossed his arms and legs in midair, still with that shark's grin.

"Oh, Light, you're such fun," he said in a mockingly-fond tone. "I always wondered what it would be like when you completely lost it…"

"I haven't "lost it"," Light retorted. "This is all perfect – going exactly to plan, Ryuk. L comes back to life, the world becomes a better, crime-free place, and _I_ get everything I want."

"What about your eye?"

"I don't care about it." Light glanced at Ryuk with his working right. "Besides, L knows that I love him. I did it because it was what he wanted – so now he knows that I will do anything for him."

"Except stop being Kira."

Light faltered, then averted his gaze from the Shinigami.

"Well, that's not something he has ever asked me for," he replied at length, his tone complacent. "Moreover, he _knows_ that I'm Kira and he loves me anyway, so it doesn't matter."

"He won't love you," Ryuk said gleefully. "Even if everything goes according to your plans, Light… he won't love you."

"And what the hell do you know, you damned Shinigami?!" Light snapped. "What do you know about humans? What do you know about _love_? You said yourself that Shinigamis don't feel it!" He twisted around again, turning fully to face Ryuk. "You don't know _anything_!" He spat. "Just because you hang around me and won't leave me alone, you think that gives you the right to make comments on what I should and shouldn't do? You don't know anything about me _or_ anything about L!"

"I know that he won't love you."

"_Shut up_!" Light yelled, standing yet again as though pulled to his feet by his anger, overriding the sharp protests of pain and nausea from his body. "You don't know anything! You think you're so smart, don't you, Ryuk – well, I don't _care_ what you say! I know you don't give a damn about me or L, we're just entertainment to you, so why _should_ I listen to anything you say?" Light clenched his fists glaring at Ryuk, even as he swayed, desperately fighting back the vertigo his body was slinging out in bud of dizzy discomfort. "Don't you _get_ it? L is _mine_ – whether he loves me or not, he's attached to me, _chained_ to me, even in death. He's said so himself that he's only here because _I_ am… You see? What we've shared even brought him back from the grave. So I _will_ get him back for good and there's nothing you can do or say to stop me!"

Ryuk smirked sickeningly, searching for sore spots to press his claws into, his voice relentlessly tearing at the thin blanket of denial draped across Light's rhetoric.

"But if only you hadn't killed him," he said bluntly, finding a clawhold and slowly ripping it open, "you wouldn't be in this situation in the first place."

Light froze; his one remaining eye narrowing at the black-clad death god, like a terrible jester before an ill-tempered king.

An ill-tempered king who has finally reached the end of his tether with said terrible jester.

"I'm tired of you, Ryuk," he said, forcing himself to keep his voice and posture steady as he completely and purposefully ignored the Shinigami's previous statement. "Really honestly and truly _sick_ to death of you. I don't think I need you anymore, so here…" He reached behind him and picked up the Death Note that had once been Misa's, throwing it onto the office floor at Ryuk's feet. "Take it and get out."

Ryuk's grin deflated somewhat as his large eyes widened even further in surprise.

"Take… what?"

"You heard me," Light hissed. "Take the Death Note and get out. I reject it. I don't want it anymore – and if I no longer own it, then you are no longer attached to me."

"But your memories—"

"I won't lose them. Although that other notebook has been stolen, I haven't forfeited ownership of it, so it still belongs to me – as does the one still in police custody."

Ryuk seemed truly floored by this, for he still just floated there in silence.

"Are you _deaf_?!" Light snapped. "You heard what I said, didn't you? Take it and get out of my sight, Ryuk! Go and have your "fun" somewhere away from me!"

"And what will you do about getting Near's heart?"

"I'll rip it out myself," Light said savagely. "With my bare hands and while he's still _alive_ if I have to…!"

Ryuk's smile reinstated itself as he shrugged, letting the rejection roll right off his back. His shock was gone as soon as it had solidified.

"Alright, if that's what you want…" He picked up the Death Note and tucked it carefully into his belt. "It's been a blast, Light. See ya!"

"Goodbye, Ryuk," Light replied stiffly as Ryuk spread out his black feathery wings and soared off through the wall out into the world.

A strange sense washed over him as he became the only person in the room. He hadn't even really _liked_ Ryuk all that much, but after spending so much time with him hanging over his shoulder, the sudden gap felt like a missing piece of his shadow, a detached ghost limb. Ryuk _had_ been companionable, particularly during those first few months of Light's campaign as Kira. He knew he would never miss him as a friend, but he'd miss his presence.

Still… he was confident that he didn't need him anymore, and he couldn't put up with his taunting at the moment. He had a lot to think about and a lot to do, and Ryuk really had been an insufferable nuisance at times…

Incidentally, Light was now lacking a Death Note, but he wasn't too concerned – since the first one had mysteriously disappeared, he'd torn out pages from the one he'd just given back to Ryuk and stashed them in various places in case that one had ever gone walkabout too. There was one safety tucked inside his wallet, one at the bottom of the top drawer of the bedside table, one taped to the back of the refrigerator in the kitchen and one in one of the drawers of this very desk.

Besides, Ryuk was a predictable idiot. Light knew he'd drop that Death Note somewhere else – maybe he'd dropped it already. So when a sudden new string of heart attacks inevitably started, all Light had to do was either track down the "new Kira" himself as Coil or Deneuve or, if the "new Kira" was idiotic enough to be caught by a regular police force, he could use his position as either the world's second or third greatest detective to demand that the notebook be handed over to him. That way he could get the notebook back and, as long as the "new Kira" hadn't died and thus still retained ownership, Ryuk wouldn't come anywhere near him. He was planning for the other, original Death Note still in police custody to be handed over to him too, once he'd sorted out this Mello-and-Near mess – and maybe, in sorting out that mess, he'd acquire the notebook that had been stolen from him too, so then he'd have all three Death Notes, no heirs to worry about and L back for good.

It was perfect.

Until then, all he had do was make the four pages he still had and the scrap inside his watch last.

* * *

Mello had been awake for a while now. His wrists were raw from where he'd been pulling at the handcuffs holding him to the bed to no avail. Now he simply lay in silence, glaring up at the ceiling of the small, dusty room, his mind swimming with a thousand questions, all of which he couldn't answer.

Where was he? Why wasn't he dead? Where was Yagami? And L… Why hadn't L helped him? He had just stood there, his presence distracting Mello enough to draw his attention away from Kira for that vital split-second…

Just what did L think he was _doing_?

Mello realized with detached logic that he was probably going to die – or, at least, that was what Kira had in mind. And to be fair, Kira now had a decidedly good advantage. What was he doing, picking them off one by one? Matt, then Mello, then Near…?

_Matt_. Matt was dead.

"What are you doing, L…?" Mello asked softly of the silent room.

No reply.

Moments became minutes – Mello didn't know how much longer he'd been lying there when he heard the door unlocking. He stiffened, hackles raised instantly as he turned his head towards it as it swung inwards.

Mello smirked, though from how tightly he grit his teeth, the expression more resembled a snarl than anything else.

"I was wondering if you'd show yourself, Yagami," he sneered, his voice heavy with caustic calculating anger as his hands turned into fists pressing relentlessly, unfeeling, against sharp bands of metal. "Thought you might just be leaving me here to rot."

Light looked at him coldly as he shut the door behind him; he was carrying a small tray, on which was a glass of water, an apple and some bread.

"Oh, and you brought me some food, too," Mello observed mockingly. "How hospitable you are."

"Shut up." Light put the tray down on the bedside table. "I can't leave you to starve, can I? Not when I'm getting information from you…"

"Like hell you are, motherfucker!" Mello yelled immediately; then tilted his head with a deriding sneer. "What happened to you, anyway? You weren't all beat up like that earlier."

Light took the gun from his belt and cocked it, aiming it at Mello.

"I told you to shut up," he murmured, low and fierce.

Mello gave a snort of laughter.

"You think I'm afraid of having a gun pointed at me? Shoot me if you want, Yagami. I don't give a damn. You already killed Matt anyway…"

Ignoring his words and still firmly holding the gun, Light went into his pocket and took out the keys to Mello's handcuffs.

"You're letting me go?" Mello smirked again, this time with a decidedly more homicidal gleam of white teeth. "It's only fair to warn you now that I'm going to rip your throat out."

"No you're not." Light unlocked one cuff so that the metal bands still encircled Mello's right wrist but no longer held him spread eagle to the bed post. At once Mello's grin twisted and he lunged upwards with his free arm—

He was thrown backwards again, his cry of pain masked by the sudden deafening _bang_, as Light shot him in the shoulder at point-blank range. His whole body stretched and jerked as the pain doubled and tripled in ricocheted waves of agony. His entire arm felt like it had been blown off at the joint and he could do nothing but curl up around the wound in his left shoulder.

"Fucking… _bastard_…!" Mello hissed as the scream died in his throat, grasping at his shoulder as he leaned back against the blood-splattered covers. His left arm was still wrenched up above his head, chained to the bedpost.

"What did you expect from Kira?" Light replied icily, cocking the gun again even as Mello continued to wheeze groans and obscenities on each labored breath. "Now here's what's happening. I only let you out of the handcuffs because I presume you are feeling quite hungry and dehydrated at this point, and would like food and drink. If you don't, then the handcuffs are going straight back on and you can just suffer through the thirst and hunger pains."

Mello shot him a sour look, still pinched with shocking pain as he heaved himself up again, clutching at his wound.

"_You're dead_," he hissed, leaning towards Light; and finding, as he did so, the barrel of the gun pressed to his chest. "You won't kill me," he went on, still confident but no longer mocking; though he wasn't afraid of Light, the unpredictable feverish glitter of the only eye the older man had left _was_ unsettling. That unstable gleam, and the bullet wound burned through his left shoulder, warned him, told him that Light was cracking in different ways now. All he had to do was switch to more subtle tactics and survive long enough to see their fruition. With a final strained grin, and a pain tolerance fortified by thirst for vengeance, he wrenched himself back up.

Mello didn't seem particularly afraid of him despite knowing that he was Kira – that was evident enough. He probably thought that he was safe, hiding behind his codename.

Time to up the ante, then.

Mello sat up again, much slower this time, his free hand clamped over the entry wound trying to stifle the blood flow there – he appeared to be in quite a bit of pain, which Light didn't find particularly surprising or distressing. He felt completely neutral about it, going through the motions of torture with the same perfunctory energy that he did everything. He had no sympathy for Mello's pain, not with his own wounds. His actions were rigid bound by logic, and he simply had no room left inside him to feel anything else, not with L looming so large in his overheated mind. These actions were simply a means to an end; an end with him and L together.

Mello still found the strength to smirk sickly at Light, however.

"You're doing very well, Kira," he growled, sitting on the edge of the bed again. "When I first saw a picture of you on the internet, I thought Matt and I wouldn't have a problem taking a skinny little runt like you down, Death Note or not. You've surprised me."

Light shot him a smirk of his own, suddenly feeling something other than the detached logic governing his actions. A perverse pleasure in seeing Mello brought down, a little twist of the knife to make him squirm…

"Such flattery," he said acidly, following the line of blood to chain. "Well, if you like, I'll let you in on my little secret… _Mihael Keehl_."

The smirk actually slid off Mello's face at the mention of his true name.

"Oh, you heard what I called you," Light went on pleasantly. "Mihael Keehl – your real name. I knew "Matt's" real name, too. It was Mail Jeevas. That's how I killed him."

"You shut your mouth about Matt!" Mello growled, lurching forward towards Light – but still prevented from getting closer by the handcuff holding him to the bed. "He was worth a _hundred_ of you, you filthy little murderer!"

Light smiled serenely.

"But now there isn't even _one_ of him to be worth anything at all," he replied calmly.

"How the fuck did you get our names?!" Mello demanded.

"I have Shinigami Eyes, so I can see your name and lifespan above your head."

"You've only got _one_ eye, idiot."

Light scowled.

"But I can still see your name, Mihael," he hissed. "So perhaps you'd better start cooperating with me, hmm?"

Mello released the grip on his wound long enough to flip him off and look away.

"You're not getting _anything_ out of me," he snapped savagely.

Light only smiled.

"By the way," he said offishly, "you do realize that your precious L isn't on your side, don't you?"

Mello looked at him out of the corner of his eye.

"What… what the hell do you mean?"

"I mean that he let Matt die to save me," Light replied, his voice hushed and delighted, bristling with salt that his words rubbed fiercely into open wounds. "Matt tried to shoot me while I was writing his name down and L took the bullets to protect me—"

"Don't you _dare_ tell me lies like that!" Mello interrupted furiously. "I know L isn't himself – which is because of _you_, you murdering bastard – but… he would never… never…"

"You don't know anything about him," Light whispered. "You have never known him as I have. You know him only as that great detective, only as a _letter_… But _I_ know him as a real person, as a _human_… You say that he would never do something like that, but how can you have any idea what he would and wouldn't do?" Light leaned down towards Mello, who seemed suddenly spellbound by his words. "Do you know how cruel he can be? How malicious, how sadistic…? And yet, do you know how kind he can be as well? How easily pleased? How childish? You consider him your hero, but you know nothing of him at all, Mello."

"And you, then," Mello spat in reply, "know him better than anyone because you were his lover, and yet _you_ were the one to kill him?"

"But even though I killed him, he still loves me," Light said haughtily. "Which only proves how strong our love is."

"You're _insane_," Mello bit out.

"No I'm not. The plans of insane people never go this well." Light drifted away towards the door; pausing at it to look back across the room at Mello, who was glaring at him with utmost hatred. "…Tell me, Mello… where is the Death Note?"

"Near has it," Mello said immediately, without even thinking; and then he seemed to realize what he'd said and his eyes widened as he put his blood-smeared hand to his mouth in utter horror.

Light smiled, even though the motion made his eye _ache_.

"Thankyou," he said graciously, and he left the room, locking the door behind him.

"_I'll fucking kill you!_" He heard Mello scream after him in frustration as he walked away from the room; incidentally, that was something he highly doubted—

Given that he'd already written Mello's true name down on one of his stolen sheets of Death Note paper.

—

The question hinged, really, on whether or not Mello and Near were in contact.

Light had hooked up the mobile phone he had taken from Mello to the computer mainframe in the office, and was busy trawling through every piece of information encoded into both the memory card and the phone's mechanism itself, looking for something – anything – that might lead him to Near. He hadn't expected Near to just be in Mello's address book and, sure enough, he wasn't, but surely they'd had contact, right…?

And if they had, he was sure to find the evidence of their connection using this oh-so-smart equipment of L's.

He was pulled out of his scheming reverie only by the shadow that fell over him – he knew that it couldn't be Ryuk, and so, on turning to find L standing behind him, he wasn't surprised.

"Hey," he greeted him quietly, rising slowly from his chair.

It was a strange thing – Light no longer felt afraid of him, despite the fact that he was no less dangerous or unpredictable. Maybe it was the act of kindness in bandaging him and staying at his side until morning (or maybe it was simply as both Ryuk and Mello had observed – Light Yagami had finally utterly lost it), but he was beginning to feel that there was a chance that things could return to normal between them. L had even said himself that he didn't hate Light, despite everything that he'd done…

Granted, the "sham" version hadn't taken the news that Light had already killed him very well, but with a permanent heart and Light's undying love, the younger man was certain he could win L back forever.

He was the only one who could see the beauty of the beast, after all.

L said nothing, reaching out towards Light's bandaged eye – and Light couldn't help but back against the desk, flinching. L ran his fingers over the pad, then withdrew them to look at them – smeared slightly with blood.

"You need new bandages," he said at length. He wandered away to one of the drawers at the other end of the long desk, pulling out another sealed First Aid kit Light hadn't known about and coming back with it. He opened it up and started to go through it, pulling out fresh bandages. "Take those ones off, Light-kun."

Light obeyed in silence, sinking into his chair as he unpinned the bandage and unwound it, then pulled the little square pad away from his eye – it was dark and stiff with dried blood. He put the handful down onto the desk as the cold air drafting across his exposed eye made him go stiff with pain. L leaned over him to inspect the ruin he'd inflicted upon himself.

"It is very badly damaged," L murmured. "Can you see out of it?"

"No."

"I expect you have destroyed some of the muscle connections, and it also appears that there is an orbital fracture." L gave a little sigh and put the clean pad over Light's blinded eye, securing it with a new bandage. "It's not something I can fix here, unfortunately… You are probably going to experience a prolapse of the internal eye contents over the next couple days, especially since there are likely still slivers of glass embedded in the eye socket itself…"

Light completely ignored L's rather dismal prognosis and simply nuzzled against his icy hand.

"Do you remember when you couldn't even put a band-aid on for yourself?" Light asked softly, seemingly out of the blue. "Remember, you pricked your finger on a needle?"

"Yes. Light-kun was kind enough to help me then – just as I am doing for him now."

"Why is it that you couldn't put on a little band-aid and yet can deal with me trying to cut my own eye out?"

"Because Light-kun needs my help," L said simply and quietly as he finished pinning the bandage into place and then even fixed Light's fringe for him so that it wasn't disturbed by the gauze. "But really, the things you will do to get my attention, Light-kun…"

Light knew he was referring to his general being-of-Kira there and said nothing.

"I notice that Ryuk is gone," L went on, closing the First Aid kit again.

"Yes, I told him to get lost."

"Is that so?" L seemed slightly amused by this. "Any particular reason?"

"Because he was an asshole."

L smiled serenely.

"I suppose I cannot argue with that," he said, and he shrugged and started to wander off.

"L…" Light stood again, unsteady for only a moment before stepping aside from the desk; L glanced back over his shoulder at him.

"Yes?"

"Come here for a moment." Light outstretched his hand towards him.

L hesitated, started to give his hand out, then withdrew it again.

"No."

"Why not? You know I couldn't hurt you even if I wanted to – which I don't."

"Because I know what—" He didn't get any further, for Light stepped forwards and grabbed his wrist, hauling him towards him; then wrapped his arms around his waist and lifted him. "…Light-kun, _don't_—!"

"It's okay," Light soothed, setting him down again, his bare feet touching down on the carpet. "Look, see…? You're okay…" He moved his arms upwards, wrapping them around L's shoulders as they stood on the one piece of floor L always refused to set foot on:

The place where he had died.

L said nothing. It was true, he seemed to be okay – he hadn't fainted or died all over again, he merely stood in Light's arms, as though this were any other part of floor. So what had it been? Had L simply been afraid of standing here, for no real reason? Or had it held an illusioned enchantment for him – a realm in which he would have to truly face the fact that he had died?

"There's nothing to be afraid of," Light murmured.

"Isn't there?" L replied softly; which was enough to make Light loosen his grip on him so that he could look at him.

They merely gazed at one another for a long, silent moment – and then L ducked out of Light's arms and stepped away from both him and the patch of floor.

"I don't understand," Light said when L was halfway across the office.

"Of course you don't."

"…Will I ever, L?"

"I don't know, Light." L paused at the door, and then left the room without a backwards glance.

So Light sank to his knees on the patch of carpet on which L had died because he hadn't understood.

Neither of them had.

* * *

(Perhaps L Lawliet was the only person – the only character in the whole of this little fairytale – who had never been given a choice in the matter.

Ryuk had chosen to drop the Death Note. Light had chosen to use it to become Kira. Mello, Near and Matt had chosen to come after Kira themselves following L's death. Misa had chosen to help Light. The taskforce had chosen to stay on the case. Rem had chosen to give up her own life to save Misa…

It was true that L had taken on the Kira case before he had been asked by the ICPO to do so, but it stood that if he hadn't taken it on of his own accord, he _would_ have been asked to do so by the ICPO. It had been a case designed for him – a criminal designed for him to catch.

In the end, maybe that was why he'd been so drawn to Light at all; because his mind had been designed to match his own.

And a story written for them both, right down to the Unhappily Ever After.

And returning from the grave… That hadn't been his choice, either. He hadn't wanted to die – but once he'd been dead, he hadn't wanted to come back. It only made Light conceited, if he still thought that L had come back to haunt him, to seek revenge on him.

…Though he didn't seem to be dwelling on that anymore. He seemed far more obsessed with getting L to love him as he once had.

Light didn't understand. L did still love him, just as he always had – and he hated him too, just as he always had.

As for _this_…

"I don't want to do this," he said to no-one in particular – and because it had been to no-one in particular, he received no reply.

It hadn't been to no-one in particular. It had been to no-one _at all_.

"I don't want to do this anymore," he said again. "I _never_ wanted to do it."

Not that he'd ever had a choice.)

* * *

There had been nothing hospitable about Light bringing him food and water.

It wasn't as though Mello had _trusted_ him, but he'd assumed that it was safe to eat and drink what Light had given him, on the grounds that he'd also assumed that Light didn't want him dead – at least, not _yet_. If he did, then surely he'd have killed him by now, given that he had his true name. And he'd only eaten and drank because of his overwhelming hunger and thirst; in fact, he hadn't touched the tray for hours, preoccupied with trying to stem the bleeding from his wound and cursing Light Yagami's name, swearing upon him all the horrific, torturous, painful deaths he could imagine.

Mello was a smart kid. He could imagine plenty.

And in addition to his fertile imagination, Mello knew his stuff. He was perfectly aware that the agonizing pains wrenching at the inside of his stomach with heated claws, making him dizzy and nauseous and causing his vision to spin, while all his veins burned with toxic heat, were because Light had poisoned him.

When the door opened again – much later – he was barely conscious; sprawled on the floor, halfway lying down and sitting up. His chained and bleeding arm kept him partially strung up, his left wrist numb, taut, and immobile against the metal cuff that would not allow him even the simple respite of being horizontal. He was too weak and dizzy to even attempt to crawl back up on the bed. His eyes were hardly open, and there was a sheen of sweat across his body even as he shivered. Blood and vomit mixed freely across the floor, and he was propped haphazardly in the middle of the sick mess, alternating between pressing blood-soaked sheets to the bullet wound in his shoulder; and leaving off to clumsily move his fingers over each bead of the rosary strung about his neck, whispering something, as though reciting reels of Hail Marys and Our Fathers.

What he breathed were not prayers, however, but hushed threats of "I'll kill you", over and over again.

"I'll _kill_ you!" Mello screeched blindly as the door closed again, jerking against the chain, the only thing keeping him upright.

"Will you, Mello?"

Mello lifted his head in dazed surprise, blinking blearily up at the figure standing over him. It was not Light, as he had expected, but…

"_L_…" Mello gasped it, the evidence of his pain tinted by relief. "About… fucking time…"

"Mello, let me say this straight off," L said flatly. "I have not come here to let you go."

Mello's dark bloodshot eyes narrowed.

"What the… hell—?" He cut himself off with a coughing groan, clutching at his abdomen and curling up. "Then what… the fuck did you… come here for…?"

"Come on." L ignored the question, kneeling down to haul Mello up, lifting him out of the puddle of filth and setting him on the bed. "We can't leave you like this…"

"…The bastard… poisoned me…"

"I know. Be quiet for a moment, Mello. Let me see this…" L pried the bloodied sheets from Mello's grip, putting them down on the mattress; then undid the first few buttons of Mello's black shirt to pull it down over his wounded shoulder. The blonde teenager shivered under his icy touch despite the sweat on his skin. "There's an exit wound," L murmured. "The bullet went straight through, avoiding major arteries. Here." He went into his pocket and pulled out some more bandages that he'd taken from the First Aid kit. "Hold still. I'll put this on to stop the bleeding. You've done well to stem it yourself."

Mello smirked despite his pain.

"Look at you, L… running around playing nursemaid…" He winced as L pulled tight on the bandage as he wrapped it firmly around the shoulder joint; then paused. "…Did you do the bandages over that Yagami bastard's eye as well?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because he'd have bled to death if I hadn't."

"_Good_!" Mello smacked L away, glaring at him with delirious eyes, feverish from both the toxin ravaging his body, and the rage boiling uncontrollably inside him. "What the hell… is _wrong_ with you, L?! Kira is _bad_, remember?" He gave another gurgling moan and clutched at his stomach, rocking forwards as the pain made him retch. "For fuck's sake, L… will you go and get… a freaking _antidote_!"

"I'm afraid that there is no antidote for arsenic, Mello." L glanced at the core of the apple Light had laced with the poison as he said it. "There's nothing I can really do for you."

"_Arsenic_…?" Mello glared up at him through his unkempt hair. "…You _knew_?"

"Yes." L went back into his pocket and drew out something else – a single sheet of Death Note paper. He unfolded it and handed it to Mello. "Here," he said as Mello slowly focused on the wavering text. "I took this from Light's pocket earlier."

Mello looked down at it; at the instructions written in the same neat hand he recognized from the Death Note Matt had taken (and in turn Near had taken from Mello himself).

_Mihael Keehl_

_Answers truthfully any questions involving either the Death Note or Near; dies of arsenic poisoning in a natural time limit _

"…He asked me… where the Death Note was," Mello whispered in horror, "and I just… told him… that Near had it… without even thinking…"

"That's because you have been made to tell truth about both of those things." L pointed at the sheet clutched in Mello's shaking hand.

"…He got me… _he_ _fucking_ _got_ _me_…" Mello balled up the sheet angrily, probably would have shredded it into tiny pieces if not for his arm, before he glared up at L. "And you… you're okay with this, are you…?! First Matt, now me, it's only… a matter of time before… he gets Near too…!"

"There is nothing I can do, Mello."

"Yes there is!" Mello yelled. "It's fucking _simple_, L! _You kill Yagami_!"

"No," L replied simply. He rose and stood before him; maybe aware of the murderous urge building within his heir.

All Mello could do, however, was simply _stare_ at him.

"You know," he said hoarsely, "…Yagami was in here… taunting me, saying that you weren't on our side, that… you'd allowed Matt to die so that he wouldn't… but I… I didn't _believe_ him…"

"You should have."

Mello's eyes widened; and for a moment, he suddenly looked his nineteen years.

"That's not true," he whispered desperately. "…You're _lying_…"

L tilted his head.

"But why would I lie to make myself look guilty?"

"_Why are you helping Kira?!_"

"I'm not." L shrugged. "I am simply not hindering him."

Mello took a shuddering breath.

"…Is it true, L?" He asked quietly. "Did you let Kira kill Matt?"

"Yes, Mello. I did."

Mello was silent for a long while.

"…_Why_?" He asked finally; and there were tears in his eyes now, because Mello was in all kinds of pain.

"I had to."

"_That's not an answer!_" Mello screamed up at him.

"Well, maybe I don't _have_ an answer, then."

"You selfish bastard—"

"Or maybe I just can't tell you."

"Don't give me that crap!" Mello spat, still clutching at his stomach – it felt like it was now in tatters. "How the fuck can you… say something like that, L? You chose us as… your heirs, so don't talk like… it was Matt's fault that you… _had_ to let him die! If that's the case… then _you_ condemned him to death! You… condemned us all to death…!"

"Didn't I say that to you before?" L replied in a hollow voice. "That it was nothing but a death knell? A, B, then Matt… Didn't I _tell_ you not to come back here?!"

"We were just trying to… do what _you_ failed to do, L!" Mello bit out. "And you failed because… you were an idiot who was so busy… having a _relationship_ with Kira that you didn't consider he would still kill you…!"

"You came back here because you didn't want Near to beat you to it," L snapped in disgust.

"…I never realized… what a complete bastard you are," Mello hissed, looking at L with a sudden newborn dislike.

"But did I ever give you any reason to believe otherwise?"

"Jesus Christ… I hate you…"

"Only because I won't help you."

"_Because of Matt_!" Mello shook with the effort of screaming, his head swaying incredulously before he suddenly doubled over, arm wrenched at a painful angle as he dry heaved, and choked. After the racking subsided, he glared up again, a thin line of drool still dripping from his trembling lips as his eyes turned liquid. "Are you a fucking _idiot_?" Another spasm of pain lashed through him, making him keen, and curl into a fetal position, arm still helplessly strung up. "_Get out_," he choked venomously, mumbling through the bloodstained blankets, unable to even look up at L. "Just get… out of my fucking sight, L. Go back… to sucking Kira's cock, or whatever it is you do… when you're not letting him murder your… own heirs…"

L said nothing, stepping away towards the door and opening it.

"…I learned it from him," he heard Mello say from the bed, his voice very quiet. "Matt's name. Mail Jeevas. I never knew it, and then… _Kira_ was the one who told me what it was." He looked up again at L through his sunshine gold hair, his expression now the prime example of utter hopeless despair, tears streaming down his face, carving through the sticky patches of blood and bile. "…How do you think that… fucking feels, L?"

"Terrible," L replied, and he walked out and shut the door behind him.

He remembered Light once asking him a question like that ("Think about what it feels like to be suspected of being Kira!"), and he'd given the same answer then, too. It was a reflex response as opposed to an indication that he'd actually considered what either of those things felt like.

It wasn't as though either of those things really concerned him anymore, anyway.

* * *

It was all going to Hell in a handbasket for L's heirs, so to speak.

One was dead. One was dying. And one had walked right into Light's outstretched hands.

Light had been unable to find any kind of connection to Near through Mello's phone. There had been nothing in the address book and although there were three or four calls stored in the Received Calls box, all with the same number, they'd been made on a restricted line, making them untraceable. He'd been thinking that probably the only way to find Near was to question Mello, who couldn't answer him with a lie – but there was no guarantee that Mello would actually know where Near was, and that aside…

He'd wanted to talk to Near himself. He wanted to arrange this. The memory of the Yellowbox Warehouse was still in his mind—

His defeat at Near's hand.

Maybe he was just being a drama queen, but he wanted a rematch on a similar stage – and it stood that he'd simply have to drag Near out of hiding anyway if he was to discover his true name, so…

Why not write the ending to the tale exactly as he wanted it?

And then, as though Fate itself agreed that the mechanism of the world should run according to the will of Light Yagami, Mello's phone started to ring.

It was that same restricted number he couldn't get at.

He said nothing as he pressed the 'Answer' button and brought the phone to his ear. Apparently Mr Restricted Number was used to Mello "answering" his phone in this fashion, for he spoke first:

"M, it's N."

"And would that be 'N' for 'Near'?" Light asked pleasantly.

There was silence; clearly "N" wasn't stupid enough to mistake him for Mello now that he'd spoken.

The silence said it all, though.

"Well, do you mind if I call you Near?" Light went on.

There was another bout of silence; and then the boy on the other end of the line spoke.

"Only if you allow me to call you Kira."

Light smiled, though Near obviously couldn't see it.

"Of course. My, what a good guess."

"As was yours."

Light was amused by this act of extreme politeness between them, so decided to keep it up.

"And what can I do for you, Near?"

"I was hoping to talk to Mello."

"So the pair of you can plot how to bring me down?"

"Naturally. May I speak to him, please?"

"How bold you are, Near – you obviously know he's with me."

"Well, since you have his phone, I considered it to be a distinct possibility."

"And you were correct in your assumption. Unfortunately, I cannot let you talk to him."

"I thought you might say that. Do you mind if I ask why?"

"He's not in a very good condition to talk right now."

Near paused.

"…Have you already killed him, then?" He asked at length.

"No, he's still alive – which is more than I can say for the other one."

"You mean Matt."

"I've heard he was called that, yes. I personally knew him as Mail Jeevas."

"I see." There was another long pause. "So may I presume, Kira, that if I do not cooperate with you, as you will no doubt demand, you will kill Mello?"

Light smirked.

"You may _presume_ that if you wish, Near. You may also presume, if you like, that if you get into contact with the NPA, ICPO or any other organization intent on capturing me, I will also kill Mello."

"What a predicament." Near sounded slightly amused. "I'm not sure if this is blackmail, terrorism or merely a threat."

"I don't think you're in any position to find this funny, Near."

"No, you are right, of course. Still, while I admit that you do have me in dire straits here – theoretically, anyway – I cannot ascertain that Mello is both actually with you and is still alive. Before I agree to any demands from you, I really will need to have some proof that Mello is alive and in your presence… _Light Yagami_."

Light faltered.

"What did you just call me?" He demanded.

"By your true name. Just so we understand each other, of course."

"…Touché, Near." Light got up. "Alright, I'll let you talk to Mello – _only_ so you can be sure that he's still alive, understand?"

"That's very kind of you, Kira."

Light snorted.

"Well, you just stay on the line," he said shortly, moving as quickly as he was able through the office building towards the elevator. Near seemed patient enough, waiting for Light to put him on to Mello.

"You still there?" Light checked when he reached the door of the room in which he'd put Mello, unlocking it.

"Of course."

"Okay, I'll get him now for you." Light stepped into the room; finding Mello curled up on the bed, quivering. "Hey, you have a phone call," he snapped, holding out the phone.

Mello didn't even look at him.

"_Fuck off_, _Yagami_," he muttered, his voice barely audible.

"It's Near."

Mello twitched a little, but then buried his face deeper into the mattress.

"Tell him… to get lost…" he murmured.

"He seems quite adamant that you speak to him—"

"_I don't want to talk to him!_" Mello screeched, putting all of his strength into it; his breathing becoming heavier still when the last syllable left his lips. "Damn… fucking… albino brat… calling up… to gloat…"

"Well," Light said, bringing the phone back to his own ear, "I'm sure you can hear him."

"Yes," Near replied dryly. "That sounds like Mello."

"Right," Light agreed blandly, leaving the room and locking the door again. "And he's alive."

"Yes, I do not doubt that." Near gave a cool little sigh. "So, then, Kira… what should I do to secure Mello's safety?"

"I'm surprised you're going to put your own life on the line to save him," Light said complacently; though he neglected to add that he'd been banking on it.

"Well, Mello and I have never been the best of friends," Near replied, "but even if I did wish him dead, it would not be by _your_ hand."

"Ah, so there _is_ honor amongst you L-wannabes."

"Of sorts, yes. So, what will it be, Kira?"

"Well, we need the perfect stage," Light said, smiling. "…Do you know where your darling L was buried?"

"I know where the church is, yes."

"I will meet you there – and make sure you're alone."

"How fitting." Near sounded highly amused again. "When?"

"At dawn tomorrow."

"You don't kill time, do you?"

"I want to finish this, Near. It's been going on too long."

"I couldn't have put it better myself, Yagami. See you tomorrow, then."

Near hung up; and Light did the same, throwing Mello's phone down onto the desk.

He smiled.

So the stage was set for the grand finale of this _danse macabre_, their lighting to be the glow of _aurora_.

How very fitting indeed.

* * *

"Well then," Near said absently, putting his phone down on top of the Death Note, which lay next to the chess set.

He retrieved his black permanent marker and gently lifted the white queen, finally embellishing her with a capital 'N'. Still holding her, he swiped every other white piece off the board, the two 'M'-adorned knights tumbling off amidst the cascade of white porcelain.

"I guess I don't have much of a choice anymore, do I?" He went on, putting the queen down sharply right in front of the black king. "That's okay – it was bound to come down to this eventually anyway…"

He went into the top pocket of his pyjama top and extracted the white king, which he deftly tossed to the man sitting in the armchair across the hotel room from him.

"Isn't that right," Near said, turning those mirror-mirror eyes on him as he caught it effortlessly with a lazy smile, "…_L_?"

* * *

**Narroch: **I'm gonna go crawl in a corner now... Oh... Mellooooooooooo... (cries)

**RobinRocks: **Yeah, she has done mucho bitching about that… Ah, yes, it's very sad, but characters are tools for plot progression, so… yeah. That's my excuse for bloodying him up so bad…

**Narroch: **Well... He is not dead yet. Still being 'alive' in this crazy story has gotta mean something, so...

**RobinRocks: **Well, naturally. Look at L. Tricky lil bastard that he is and all… Ka ka ka…

**Narroch: **Thankyou, everyone for reading. We are overwhelmed by you guys, really. You all mean the world to us. Even if we do write horrible horrible Mello scenes. Gah... I feel so awful for himmmmm...

**RobinRocks: **Yeah, we'll try and not be so slow with an update next time. On a largely-unrelated note, I'd just like to take this opportunity to say that I changed my mind about the _Death Note_ dub – I didn't like it much at first, but now that I have six DVDs of it, I confess that it's actually a very good quality dub, not to mention bloody addictive… Oh, and also, this may be another bunch of garbage like my excited _L Reborn_ ranting last time, but I heard they might be doing a Hollywood _Death Note_ movie. Eh, I firmly believe that only a Tim Burton/Johnny Depp collaboration would make such a thing in any way acceptable, but you never know… O.o If this is true, it doesn't surprise me – they've been doing a lot of anime movie adaptations recently. They did _Speed Racer_, and apparently there is talk about movies of _Astro Boy, Dragonball Z_, _Ghost in the Shell_, _Neon Genesis Evangelion_ and _Battle Angel Alita_, so…

Heh, how unlike Hollywood, to milk the cash-cow…

- RobinRocks and Narroch xXx


	29. Ghost Factory

To begin, let me clear up something that quite a few of you asked in your reviews:

Yes – the person with Near in the last scene of _Beauty of the Beast_ was L. It really was. As in, the same L who was with Light only the scene before. There are not two Ls. Only one. And he's a backstabbing little SOB.

Moving on.

To all who concluded that our next update would be on Halloween… you were wrong! :) Today's update, on 21st October, is in celebration of **Apple Day**! Yes, it _is_ a real day! (Wiki it if you don't believe me!) Ryuk would like this day, non? I only found out about it recently, but as soon as I did, I was like "We HAVE to update _Poison Apple_ then!". It's _so_ perfect…

(Incidentally, 21st October is also Samuel Taylor Coleridge's birthday. Just, you know, FYI.)

BIG thankyou to: **Star Jinin, Scripta Lexicona, shutupandsing, Lawliet's Angel, ?, xxxyuniexxx, Deus3xMachina, TheQueenofMediocrity, Feline, Jay, HyperRme, blondevil, recipe for insanity, AnotherLiar, yellowrose87, 4udball, Amy-2609, KiraXsama, Shad0wsole, tsuki aoi usagi, PhoebeGilmore, PikeNecoMico, Synonymous Brian, evangelinefyre, badwolf.5, Cween Almond, yaro, yourholiness, kitoriwitch613, L Ninja, Celeste Goodchild, Tanka, hi, riin, Jungle John, BakayaroManiac, The Sacred Pandapuff, windearth, Liviania, AccordingToMel, Ryuuzaki-chan008, K. R. Ukido, akane-nechan, xXxIchigoBeyondxXx, ObsidianEmbers, Aiko Celeste, Layalas, Lyson, Hikari Daeron, Nea Vanille, Ren, Amber, bluepup, Shakuhachi Jade, Kitsushita-Socks, daxterandboxer, CuteCherryBlossom, LawlietIsJustice, Minolta, TurtleShell, birthname, next big thing12, Opacus, Candy Apple Heart Attack, gyrfalcon122, ddz008, ClickRed, PedoBear, Albinokatzchen, Aiko Celeste, anon, rayray, Kate **and **Anna! **

Call this chapter something of a breath of fresh air.

Ghost Factory

Such an exhibition of vanity it was – or maybe it was simply obsession – to stand before a mirror like this.

Because the way he stood before it _was_ obsessive – self-loving and self-serving, vain and superficial, as he demanded truth of the kind that only a mirror can give.

The truth that is known as a reflection. An inverse of reality.

Light Yagami stood before that mirror, motionless. It was unscathed, smooth, not yet shattered by L's hatred of its particular truth. He'd always known that he was beautiful. He'd seen it in other mirrors a thousand times before. His mother had told him. Girls in his classes had told him. _Boys_ in his classes had told him. Misa had told him.

_L_ had told him.

So even if he never saw his reflection again for as long as he lived, he would always know that he was beautiful.

He did not think for even a moment that the bloodstained bandage sloping downwards over his left eye, nor the similar creamy gauze at his arm, nor indeed even the deep purples and blues and near-blacks painted across his slender chest, diminished his beauty in the slightest. They were, in contrast, marks of greater beauty still, because the latter two had been gained through his pursuit as Kira, battling with one who would put a stop to his regime, and the former…

The former was a mark of his love for L; his willingness to inflict pain upon himself to _prove_ his love. He touched the bandage gently and smiled, because even though it hurt immensely (no longer bleeding red, but clear and white, and L had been right about prolapse), he was still happy that he'd done it.

And now, with tomorrow's _aurora_ approaching, the last piece of his plan was to fall neatly into place. He'd already written Mello's name down, and the instant he saw Near's face, his name would be his, too, and then…

He would stand here again, before this mirror, with Near's heart in his hands – to offer as another gift to L. From there on, Kira would reign, unhindered and realized in all his glory, he'd be God of the New World he'd painstakingly crafted to match his own beauty.

With tomorrow's _aurora_ came the Happily Ever After he'd struggled so hard to rewrite as such.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall," Light murmured, half-laughing as he pressed his hand to the cool glass. "…Who is the fairest one of all?" He leaned up against it completely, pressing his forehead to it, and gazing right into the one glimmering brown eye of his reflection. "Me," he breathed, misting up the glass. "Not Snow White, dear mirror. _Me_."

* * *

L came to the bed at around two in the morning. Light was asleep on his back, looking as beautiful as he always did when he slept. L stepped up onto the mattress and crossed it, sinking down onto Light, straddling his stomach on top of the sheets. Although his weight did not awaken him, the icy aura that curled around him did after a long moment.

Light opened his one undamaged eye slowly, blinking through the darkness up at L, able to see the chalky glow of his white-as-snow skin and the inky splash of his black-as-ebony hair.

Only days ago, waking up to the sight of L looming over him like this would have terrified Light, but now he only gave a small smile.

"Hello, Sleeping Beauty," L greeted him.

"Hello, Snow White," Light replied softly.

"That nickname again, Light-kun?"

"It suits you."

"As does yours."

Light pushed himself up, grimacing at the pain in his eye, arm and chest; but adamant that he must sit up, be closer to L…

"You are very trusting of me now," L observed. "What is to say that I have not come in here to inflict harm on you? Perhaps I have come to relieve you of your other eye."

"Take it, then. I don't mind." Light grasped L's wrist, even lifting his hand up towards his right eye. "Go on, L. I won't even scream."

L smirked.

"Yes, you would. And you only offer because you know that I won't."

Light let go of his wrist again; and then leaned closer still, meaning to kiss him—

L leaned swiftly back out of his reach, avoiding the kiss. On meeting nothing, Light drew back himself, looking aside as though trying to cancel the attempted motion.

"Why are you in here really?" He asked softly.

L didn't answer him, instead looking up at the ceiling.

"This can't be comfortable for you," he said finally, more to himself. "I am very cold. Cold as _death_, even."

"It's alright."

L smiled at him, amused. It wasn't alright – the dead detective could see that. Light was physically restraining himself from shivering, with his back straight and his elbows locked up and his skin covered with pinpricks. He was returning the smile even so, however.

He pulled back the sheets, patting the empty side of the mattress.

"Do you… want to come in?"

L shook his head.

"No." He leaned down towards Light, pressing his hands to the headboard on either side of the younger man's head. "I want you to come with me."

Light blinked.

"To where?"

"…Just to the kitchen." L gazed at him with his dead, unreflective eyes. "Will you, Light-kun?"

"Okay."

L gave a satisfied nod and rose again, moving away and off Light.

"Thankyou," he said quietly, and curled up near the headboard as Light gripped the bedside table and shakily heaved himself up into a sitting position, stifling his gasp of pain as he swung his legs gingerly over the side of the bed. "It is kind of Light-kun to accommodate my whims when his physical state is not at its best," he went on.

"I'm fine," Light replied defensively, stopping himself from stumbling forwards by grabbing again at the table. He pulled his robe on over his pajamas, tugging it tightly around himself to warm himself up, and then putting on his socks, too.

"Ready?" L was already standing on the bed again, and, at Light's nod, padded across it and stepped neatly down to join him. "Let's go, then." He took Light's hand tightly and led him out of the room.

"L, the kitchen is… the other way," Light protested barely a minute later, as L began to lead him up the staircase he knew all too well, having been led up here by L many times before – usually with the chain jangling between them.

"I know," L replied, not looking at him. "We'll go there soon, Light-kun."

The roof of the HQ building was understandably freezing at 2am on a December morning, and L clinging to his hand wasn't helping – Light turned up the collar of his robe, immediately beginning to shiver anyway as L led him across the roof to the edge, where they'd stood many times before, beneath _aurora_ and rain and a gray, dreary wash of a sky, to the sound of bells, even though they'd never quite decided if they had been for a wedding or a funeral…

"Do you consider this your kingdom?" L asked, letting go of Light's hand and leaning up against the bar, looking down over Tokyo, alive with a greenish glow.

"Should I?" Light replied quietly, wrapping his arms around himself to try and keep warm against the wind cut through him like razors.

L shrugged, not looking at him.

"You were born here, in this city," he pointed out. "You are fully Japanese, and have lived in Japan – here, in Tokyo – all your life. This is where you found the Death Note, this is where your first victim committed his sin and was punished by you, this is where you decided to become Kira, this is where Misa Amane followed you to… And this is where _I_ followed you to, Light Yagami. This city… is the heart of the matter."

Light shrugged himself, rubbing his arms.

"I thought that was important," L continued. "When I had this building designed, I mean to say. I thought that Tokyo was an important factor, and that we should have a perfect, eagle-eye view of it. Regardless of whether _you_ were Kira or not, I had already tracked Kira to the Kanto region. This city was important. Even my heirs followed…" L gave a sudden shake of his head. "I'm rambling," he apologized abruptly. "This is just meaningless small talk. Please do not feel that you are obliged to answer. The truth is… I just wanted to come up here again." L looked over his shoulder at Light. "…With you, I mean."

Light returned his gaze, but said nothing. After a while, L looked away again up at the featureless sky.

"It is exceptionally cold," he observed. "I think it's going to snow."

Light gave an agreeable nod, growing more and more uncomfortable with the wind whipping away his body heat.

"Light-kun, you don't seem very happy," L finally said, coming away from the edge of the roof to stand next to him.

"I-It's cold…" Light mumbled, unable to stop the tremor in his voice as his jaw spasmed in shivery protest. He quickly looked up as he suddenly realized what he had said, and who he had said it to.

"But it's nothing I can't handle…" He trailed off lamely, trying to play off the irony of his previous statement. As if to cement the idea, he strode forward and embraced L, suddenly assaulted with cold from both within and without. Light's body instantly seized up, and breathing became a painful ordeal as the frigid air seared his lungs.

"Why d-did you want to c-come up here anyway?"

L regarded him for a moment, watching as his lips turned a darker shade of blue, before smirking.

"For tradition's sake."

Light waited for an explanation of the cryptic answer, but got nothing as L instead gently pushed him away, grabbing hold of his hand to lead him towards the door and the warm haven it offered.

"Let's go back inside."

Light gladly allowed the strange answer to slide by unquestioned if it meant going back indoors. L now actually making for the promised destination of the kitchen. The younger man had no idea what he wanted, why he was prying Light from bed at this time of the morning to wander about the building in his particularly-dead company; and felt that he should probably exhibit more wariness than he _was_ exhibiting right now, given L's (both living and dead) track record of cruel little whims concerning Light…

But yet L seemed drained of his malice and sullenness now – as though he had returned to his living state (only minus the very obvious "living" part). And maybe that was simply a greater cause for suspicion, but Light found himself… _wanting_ to trust him, at least just for tonight.

So he made excuses, the way L had for him.

"I'll make some coffee," L said, on entering the kitchen.

"You sure?" Light said with a tired smile, sinking into a chair at the table. "I want it sometime this century, you know."

"Patience is a virtue, Light-kun." L went about it in his slow, delicate way, perhaps to illustrate this point; Light was grateful for the coffee when L finally brought it to him, wrapping his hands around the cup to warm them up. "You see?" L went on, settling opposite Light with a cup of coffee for himself. "Now you appreciate it more, because you had to wait."

"If you say so," Light murmured, sipping at it happily.

"How is your eye?"

Light touched at the bandage sloping down over his ruined eye.

"It's okay. I can't see out of it, and it still hurts, but the bleeding has mostly stopped now."

"So it's not okay."

"It's… better."

L gave a shake of his head.

"What an idiotic thing to do…"

"It made you be nicer to me," Light pointed out.

"I'm always nice to you, Light-kun."

"Like fun you are."

L hummed to himself for a moment, considering that.

"Well, alright, there have been times when I haven't been all that nice to you," he decided, consulting the ceiling as though there was a list scrawled there of all the times he'd tormented Light in one way or another. "Teasing you, terrorizing you, being cruel to you, depriving you of sleep, attempting to drug you, threatening to gouge out your eyes…"

"Turning the shower water to blood."

"I maintain that you imagined that."

"I did _not_!"

"But on further inspection, there was no trace of blood whatsoever, in either your shower or on your person." L blinked at him. "How do you explain that? I am hardly a magician, Light-kun."

"But you're great at cheating at cards – at hiding them up your sleeve."

"One could say that," L agreed primly, taking a delicate sip of his own coffee.

"Why are you being like this all of a sudden?" Light found himself asking, blurting it out almost against his will.

"Like what?"

"So… _friendly_!" Light stressed, putting his coffee cup down firmly. "In all the time you've been back here, the only times when you've acted like _this_ have been when… well, when you had someone else's heart inside you! If you were capable of acting like this, then why didn't you? I… I just don't understand."

"Well, that's simple." L gave a flippant shrug. "I was sulking with you."

"L, I didn't bring you back."

"I know you didn't." L gave him a sweet little smile. "You only killed me."

"Okay, then," Light bit out. "Why have you _stopped_ sulking with me?"

"Who said that?" L inquired innocently. "I am merely being civil. I am not completely indisposed to acting maturely, Light-kun."

Light's one working eye narrowed suspiciously.

"What do you want?"

"Nothing," L said, and he went back to his coffee quite contentedly.

Light straightened himself up irritably.

"Well, excuse me if I don't exactly buy that," he said stiffly.

"You're excused," L replied politely, not looking up.

"All I'm saying is," Light tried again, trying to keep a tight rein on his fast-unraveling patience, "that as happy as I am that you only seem to want my company as opposed to my severed head on a plate, I find it hard to swallow that you are contented to sit here with me, drinking coffee and making small talk, when your heir is dying only floors above us."

L tilted his head.

"So you _did_ want me to know about that," he observed.

"I had considered that it wouldn't get past you."

"Which it didn't."

"Obviously not."

"I see." L linked his long fingers together thoughtfully. "So you consider my sudden change in behavior towards you to perhaps be simply a ruse to lull you into a false sense of security, since you believe that your actions towards Mello should have provoked me to seek some kind of vengeance on you." The dead detective nodded. "I agree, you _are_ in a rather precarious position, Light-kun. However… I must impress that Mello's condition is no longer my concern. No matter what I inflict on you in repayment for what you have done to Mello, it will not help him. I've always thought revenge a rather strange business, anyway."

"You aren't above it, certainly," Light recalled bitterly.

"Well, no, but any of those petty revenges I ever exacted upon you while I was alive were simply that – petty. Balm for my bruised ego, if you will. That is different."

"Mello came here to get revenge on me."

"And look where it has landed him." L was more interested in his coffee than he was in this conversation, clearly. He didn't offer anything else in the way of this particular subject.

"…So you really do… just want to talk?" Light finally said. "To me?"

"To you, yes." L eventually looked up at him again. "You are the only friend I've ever had, Light; as well as the only lover… No, what did we agree to call it? "Partners of circumstance"? Well, no matter what you've done… you are very important to me. Even if I hate you, those ties are still there."

Light gave a silent nod, and they were both quiet for a while.

"Do you remember that story I told you?" L asked suddenly.

"What story?"

"The fairy story. My favorite." L sipped at his coffee again. "About the prince, blessed with grace and beauty, and cursed with the power to kill."

"What about it?"

L shrugged.

"Nothing. I simply wondered if you remembered it. It is quite unlike the other story."

"What other story?"

"The one about the detective shagging his suspect on a nightly basis. The conclusion of the tale was that the suspect turned out to be the murderer all along." L shot him a dry smile. "Such an ironic story."

"They're both the same story," Light said.

"How confidently you say that."

"But they are."

"Yes, they are."

"So why did you say that they were unalike?"

"In the style of their narration, they are dissimilar, even though they are the same story. In the fairy story, the prince is portrayed as a poor, pitiable character, because his beauty and goodness cause him to fall victim to the evil of his own great power. In the _other_ story, the prince is re-imagined as a cruel and dishonest character, a _villain_, if you will. Any story can be rewritten in almost every way imaginable, characters changing to fit the style in which it is told." L's dead eyes glinted. "To some, Kira is a demon. To others, a God."

"…And what do _you_ think of Kira, L?" Light asked quietly, looking at him very intently across the table. "You, I mean, as… as L Lawliet. Not as L, the great detective. Just you. I don't think you've ever told me."

"Why would I have? And besides…" L shrugged offishly. "You never asked."

"So what _do_ you think? Light pressed.

"Well, I admit that your actions as Kira get results – there _has_ certainly been a noticeable decrease in crime levels all throughout the world. However, as I have said before, Light-kun… You are not eradicating evil, merely repressing it. It is within our nature to be evil. If it wasn't, then we wouldn't do evil things. Additionally, there are people who do evil things because of either their mental state or because their circumstances force them into it. Therefore I find it simply arrogant of you to take the moral high-ground on a matter so… _human_."

"But if you believe our situation so hopeless," Light argued, "then why are you… I mean, _were_ you a detective? You were working towards trying to stop evil too."

"No I wasn't. I don't think evil can be prevented or halted. As I have said, it is within our nature. If there is a God, then He has obviously designed us that way and gives us the freewill to choose whether or not to commit evil. If there isn't a God, then the outcome is still largely the same – it is simply how we are, and for the most part, a person can choose whether or not to murder or steal. I think, Light, that our situation is neither hopeless or hopeful. This is life. In the scale of things, both you and I are insignificant. The love you and I have shared is insignificant in the face of existence itself." L gave a small smile. "Does my opinion seem rather bleak to you?"

"A little, yes." Light twisted his fingers together on the table top. "…But you still haven't told me why you became a detective."

"Do you really want to know that?"

"Yes." Light looked at him intently. "I do."

"Curiosity," L answered simply. "The mechanism of the human mind intrigues me, and always has. I've always wondered why people do things. Why – and how. I suppose I have a sense of justice, too, but honestly…? Just pure interest, really. That's why."

"You're a seriously sick bastard, L," Light replied quietly, looking down at his coffee. "Like a little kid with an ant farm."

"Pot calling the kettle black, Light-kun."

"Don't compare us, you heartless—!" Light cut himself off abruptly; L only smiled at him.

"Yes, I certainly _am_ heartless," he agreed pleasantly. "Maybe because I was an idiot and lost it to you."

Light took a deep breath, calming himself down again.

"That heart…" he said hesitantly. "…That last one I gave you. It was your heir's. The red-headed boy. You know. Matt. I got Ryuk to bring it for you."

He braced himself then; but L only gave a little sigh, as though impatient.

"I know that, Light-kun."

Light looked up at him warily.

"…And you took it anyway?" He asked faintly.

"It was the only way. The fact remained that you had taken my heir's heart from his corpse. If I had not taken it into my own chest, what would you have done with it? Thrown it away? That's worse, Light-kun. Far worse. Incidentally, I also know that the first heart was Misa-san's and that the second had belonged to Matsuda-san."

Light dipped his head meekly and said nothing.

"Regardless," L added drolly, "far be it from me to judge you by such actions. I appreciate that love is messy business – all this taking and giving of hearts…"

Light glanced up again, half-fascinated.

"Do you regret it?" He asked softly.

"Regret what, Light-kun?"

"…Us."

"Well, as easy as it is for me to blame both my failings and my death on our relationship, I have concluded that there is a very distinct possibility that I would have been killed even if we had never met, Light-kun. Kira and L were, of course, enemies. So when I alleviate that kind of blame from what we shared… then no. I don't regret it. You know what I was like prior to your "persuasion". I would never have known love if it wasn't for you – and honestly, I don't think I was – or am –capable of loving anyone _but_ you."

Light smiled, his earlier anger completely washed away by these words now.

"I'm… so happy that you think that," he said.

"Of course," L went on, not really listening to him, "our relationship was very abnormal and flawed. You were my suspect – what I did was highly unprofessional and extremely stupid. Additionally, I am seven years older than you, and the basis of our relationship was founded on cruel mind games and – as you'll no doubt recall – rape. There was a lot wrong with it. Maybe it was predestined that it wouldn't end happily."

"But I—"

"Consider it, I mean. It's very strange. You raped me, so I raped you back, and was crueler still, and we ended up falling in love. That's _wrong_. There is nothing right about that, is there? What does that say about either us or our relationship?" L frowned. "But then again… sex is simply human nature. Our relationship was homosexual, but regardless, the entire point of sex is procreation. If humans didn't need to reproduce in that way, then sex wouldn't exist at all. I scorned the dependency and ties it forms between people, but what was I saving myself from, really? Nothing but a breeding ritual. It's merely human mindset that elevates sex to the status of "something special". No other living organism does this. So was "raping" me really such a terrible thing on your part?" He glanced at Light. "Please do not think I am excusing the act of rape itself. I am simply considering the idea of sex in accordance with the human mindset. Humans are the only creatures which have sex for pleasure instead of reproduction. We are the only things that use it as an expression of love."

"Then surely…" Light paused, as though struggling to put what he wanted to say into words. "…Surely, if we got through the rape and… still fell in love, then that can only prove how much… I mean, how strong that love _is_."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not." L shrugged. "It doesn't matter now, anyway."

"Of course it matters!" Light cried.

"Why do you say that? I was simply considering the… mechanism of our relationship, shall we call it? The starting point? After all these years, surely that doesn't matter any more."

"But you just said that the reasoning for things is what interests you! That your curiosity for why and how people do things is what made you want to be a detective."

"But I'm not a detective anymore, am I?" L asked by way of reply, sounding amused. He held up one of his pale, thin wrists. "…I'm just a corpse these days."

Light fell silent, dropping his gaze to the surface of the kitchen table.

"And that's my fault," he muttered, more to himself.

"It is," L agreed.

"Rem… she would have killed me, you know. If I hadn't engineered the situation to make her kill you. Even her own life didn't matter to her. She just wanted to save Misa."

"I know that. You were in a difficult position, were you not? Your life or mine. It is understandable that you would choose to save yourself. Humans are selfish like that."

"How can you be so accepting of it?!" Light snapped, angered by L's indifferent attitude. "What I did to you, it was… it was _terrible_."

L shrugged.

"It was. But you're human. Humans are dreadful creatures. It is likely that I, given the opportunity, would have saved my life over yours. Rem-san gave her life to save Misa-san, but Rem-san was not a human." He shook his dark head. "Let's not blame either of them, though. It is… disrespectful to speak ill of the dead."

Light gazed at him helplessly.

"You know," he said, "when you were alive… even though I loved you, I always thought you were a horrible person, L. You always seemed so cruel and self-serving. But you're not, are you? You're… you're very kind."

L looked amused.

"No, I'm not. You were right to think that about me. I was a nasty piece of work when I was alive, and I still am. It's merely your mindset, Light-kun. How often you change your mind these days. Only minutes ago you referred to me as a "seriously sick bastard". Really, you were right the first time." He shrugged. "Regardless, I seem to love you, and you seem to love me back."

"I _do_ love you," Light pressed fiercely. "More than anything. And… I'd do anything to prove it to you."

L glanced at Light's bandaged eye.

"That's alright," he said lazily. "I think I've had quite enough of that."

"That thing you wanted… If only you'd tell me what it is, I would give it you." Light looked at him sincerely, even leaning towards him. "Whatever it is, I'll give it to you. I promise, L."

"That's very kind of you, Light-kun," L replied over his coffee; and he added nothing more.

Light opened his mouth to speak again, but his voice failed him; instead he went back to his own coffee, for lack of a better response.

"My father," he said finally, "was… so against this. You and I, I mean."

(And Light spoke so strangely of his father – remorseless, not as though he didn't care that he'd killed him, but as though he didn't _accept_ that he had. As though he thought his father was still alive…)

"I know. He made that very obvious. Incidentally, so was Watari," L said pointedly.

"Watari didn't like me."

"No, he didn't." L gave a shrug. "He disliked you very much, Light-kun. Incidentally, I don't think your father really liked _me_ all that much, so it's even."

"My father had a lot of respect for you," Light said firmly.

"He just didn't like the thought of me leading you astray."

"…No, he didn't."

L gave a shrug.

"That's understandable," he said amiably. "I'm several years older than you. Same gender, too. Watari's problems were largely similar, although he did have one additional issue with our relationship than your father had."

"Yeah?"

L nodded absently.

"Yes. He was pretty confident that you were Kira." L paused, considering what he'd just said. "Hm, no, that's not quite right. It was more a concern that _I_ was pretty confident that you were Kira, was sleeping with you anyway, and thus was not trying as hard to find evidence against you as such." L gave a sad little sigh. "…He was only trying to help me, to talk some sense into me, but I didn't listen. It's my fault he died." He glanced up at Light again. "I suppose I lied earlier. I do have one regret about our relationship – Watari's death. I was aware of the danger to myself, and by that point, I didn't really care, but Watari… I never meant for him to…"

"L, I never asked Rem to kill Watari," Light said desperately. "I swear to you. I was surprised when she killed him. I didn't think she would."

L shook his head, more to himself.

"It doesn't matter now," he said again. "It can't be changed. But he objected, he argued with me, told me I was being stupid… He was right. I knew he was, even then; I just didn't listen. …That's _why_ I didn't listen."

Light put his head in his hands wearily.

"I wish I'd never… that plan of mine, I just… I set it all up before I was even taken into custody by you, by the time I got my memories back there was nothing I could do, but…" He gripped at his hair in frustration. "Damn it, Misa… if only she'd never… Rem should never have given her that other Death Note, that's when everything started going bad…"

L said nothing, giving the impression of not having heard Light's irritated whispers.

"I was all for killing you, L!" Light snapped, slamming his hand down on the kitchen table to arrest the dead man's attention. "I couldn't wait to be rid of you, so when Misa was captured, I set everything up so that whatever happened, you'd end up dead. But that… that was before we were chained together, and by the time I got my memories back, I loved you, but… there was nothing I could do…"

"You don't have to excuse yourself, Light-kun," L said genially. "I quite understand the situation that you were in. I have said that already."

"_I didn't want you dead!_" Light shrieked. "But I… I'd trapped myself, and of course Rem was going to kill you, I'd set it up so that if she wanted Misa saved, she'd simply _have_ to kill you, but… god, I… I was so pleased that everything had gone exactly as I planned it, I thought that I _did_ want you dead, but… I didn't. I really didn't. But it was too late…"

"Light-kun, calm down—"

"It hurt so much," Light whispered, his one eye wide and almost unseeing. "The fact… that you just weren't there any more, it hurt so badly I thought I was going to _die_… And it was worse, because… because your death hadn't been something beyond my control. It wasn't sickness or an accident. It was my fault. I'd… I'd killed you myself. It was so awful, so lonely and frightening, but how… how could I really be deserving of the sympathy everyone gave me? That made it worse, and… well, because everyone just thought I was mourning your death because you'd been my friend, nobody knew just how much you meant to me, nobody knew how much I loved you…"

L smiled slightly.

"Yes, I suppose it was easier for me. Still, you _do_ have a rather peculiar habit of killing the people you love – and who love you…"

Light wasn't listening; he'd sunk to the tabletop and was sobbing quietly, his face buried in his arms.

"I'd never… never regretted _anything_ so much… in my entire life," he choked. "The moment… y-you fell still in my arms… I just… it started hurting, a-and… no matter what I did, the pain… just didn't go away…"

"That is called 'heartbreak', Light-kun," L said quietly. "And I know how it feels."

Light glanced up at him, his right eye shining with tears.

"The notebook you gave me," L went on softly. "You put the ace card in there. I'd call it a confession, but it wasn't – it was a taunt. I knew then that you were Kira. That was the same, you know. It hurt _so much_."

"But I hadn't died," Light said, wiping his eye.

"Hadn't you?" L gave him a sad smile.

Light suddenly found that he couldn't look at him, and quickly averted his gaze.

"I slept with Matsuda," he said, more to fill the horrible silence than anything else. "I wanted you back so badly, and Misa… she obviously wasn't…"

"Well, yes, Misa-san was decidedly more female than me."

"She let the dye in her hair grow out." Light was just talking for the sake of it now, just to have a stream of words flowing beneath the confessions. "She had black hair naturally. Black as ebony, like yours, but… it wasn't enough, so…"

"Matsuda-san and I are nothing alike, Light-kun."

"It was the _hair_," Light said desperately. "The black hair, just like yours."

"And the penis."

"_Ryuzaki_!" Light was so indignantly taken-aback by that sudden "observation" that it took him a while to realize that he'd called L by his old pseudonym.

L was actually laughing a little, shaking his head as he looked steadfastly down at what was left of his coffee.

Light's eye widened, and he put his hand to his mouth in a comical manner.

"…I just called you…"

"I know." L gave a little cough, brushing back a spike of his hair from his face as he tried to stop himself from laughing. "It must be because you were so used to yelling that name in that tone."

"I can't _believe_ you just said that."

"I'm dead, Light-kun. I don't have to bother with social graces anymore."

"You didn't bother with them anyway."

"No, that's true…"

Light was smiling now, apparently shaken out his melancholy state by L's defunct-as-usual "sense of humor". L finished his coffee and rose from his seat, holding out his thin white hand for Light's cup – Light drained it and handed it over. L drifted away with them to the sink; pausing on his way back to the table next to the thing that had caught his eye:

The paper bag that had once held the dozen apples Light had bought for the purpose of bribing Ryuk.

L rummaged in the bag curiously, emerging with a single crimson apple.

"Last one," he said, and he bit into it without any hesitation whatsoever.

"You're just like Ryuk," Light said quietly as L came back to the kitchen table.

"Hm? Ugly?"

"No. I mean… you don't have to eat, but you can."

"So you don't think I'm ugly?"

Light blinked in surprise.

"Of course not. I've… I've never called you ugly, L."

"That's not what I said," L said through a mouthful of apple. "I said '_think'_."

"Okay, I don't _think_ you're ugly."

L smiled at him.

"Well, of course, you've always been an excellent liar," he said cheerfully; he offered his half-eaten apple over the table to Light. "Love apple, Light-kun?"

Light hesitated in taking it.

"I know I'm a corpse," L added dryly, "but as you can clearly see, I'm not rotting – nor, incidentally, am I a zombie of the horror-movie-kind. You won't become like me if you eat it."

"Oh, no, it's not that, it's just…"

"You think I poisoned it?" L was smirking now.

"No." Light practically snatched it from his hand at this. "…It's just… I don't think you ever offered me a 'love apple' while you were alive."

L shrugged.

"Better late than never," he said absently.

Light couldn't argue much with that, and bit into the apple. He ate it in silence, since his mouth was full and L wasn't talking anymore. He finished it quickly, looking up at L again as he licked some of the juice from the core.

"You should probably go back to bed," L said, somewhat abruptly.

Light shook his head.

"No, I want to sit here with you."

"Very well." L reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a packet of cards. "We'll play Twenty-Ones. If you win, we can stay here all night. If I win, you go back to bed."

"What are you, my mother?"

"No, but you seem tired." Light yawned as L said it. "You see? I shouldn't really have pulled you out of bed, tonight of all nights…"

Light suddenly became very guarded, piecing two and two together.

"You know… about tomorrow, don't you? Dawn. Near."

"Of course I know." L wasn't looking at him, preoccupied with shuffling the cards. "Don't you think you should be well-rested, then?"

"Forget the cards." Light got up, suddenly very wary of L again; he pushed in his chair as L dealt him two cards anyway. "You're right, I should get some sleep."

"That is probably best." L lazily turned over his own cards; the jack of clubs and the ace of hearts. "I had twenty-one anyway."

"You're a bastard, L," Light said, and he walked out of the kitchen.

"How fickle Light-kun is," L sighed after him despairingly. "He changes his mind about me far too often…"

Light was already back under the covers by the time L followed him into the bedroom; he buried himself beneath them completely as he felt L's weight sink the mattress a little.

"And we were getting on so well," L said, his voice melodic as he pawed at Light through the sheets.

"Go away, L!" Light hissed angrily.

"Don't be like that, Light-kun."

"Tell me," Light spat, suddenly shoving the covers back, "do you toy with your heirs like this? Are you playing about with Near too?"

L tilted his head.

"Could you rephrase that, please? It just sounds a little… well, _inappropriate_, considering that Near is twelve years younger than me—"

"_Answer the fucking question!_" Light screeched.

"Oh, Light-kun, don't shout at me," L said unhappily, taking Light's shoulders. "You killed me, after all. I'm not obliged to be nice to you."

Light attempted to shrug out of his grip.

"Get off me!" He snapped. "I don't want you touching me. I hate you!"

L smiled, putting a cold finger to Light's lips.

"Ah, now… That's one lie that wasn't very convincing. You don't hate me. You love me. You love me enough to give me whatever I ask for." His fingers drifted upwards over Light's cheek and onto the bandage covering his left eye. "…Enough to do _this_ to yourself." L's other hand came to Light's face too. "Your love for me is unfathomable. I don't think either of us even _understands_ how much you love me. I don't mean to sound arrogant – it is simply that I know that you love me with all of your heart, Light Yagami."

Maybe he sensed that Light was about to start crying again (and maybe he was simply sick of it at this point), for L leaned down towards him and kissed him. It wasn't a comfortable kiss, really – instead a strange, contrasting, almost painful infusion of hot and cold. Light didn't care – he grabbed at L, closing his eyes and pushing upwards into it, almost desperately, one arm wrapped around L's icy, slender chest and the hand of the other sank deeply into his ebony hair.

As they broke apart, Light breathlessly whispered "I love you" – and L slipped something into Light's hand.

"I believe you," L replied quietly, pushing Light back down to the mattress. "Goodnight."

He brushed Light's hair away from his bandaged eye and then slipped from the mattress, silently leaving the room. Light shifted, getting comfortable. L was right, he _was_ tired, and now… he felt much calmer, too.

Much happier.

He opened his hand to look at what L had given him; smiling contentedly.

A chess piece. The white king. With an 'L' on it.

He slept with it clutched in his hand.

* * *

"_Hello, Sleeping Beauty," L said softly as Light's eyes fluttered open._

"_Hello, Snow White." Light rubbed sleepily at his hair._

"_You insist on calling me that."_

"_**You**__ insist on calling __**me**__ that."_

"_But it fits you. You look so lovely when you're asleep, Light-kun."_

"_Just when I'm asleep?"_

"_Well, no. But particularly so."_

"_Well, 'Snow White' fits you, Ryuzaki. You're so pale, and the hair…" Light frowned, blinking up at L, who was leaning over him. "What do you want, anyway? Why did you wake me up? Did you find a new lead?"_

_L shook his head._

"_No," he replied. "I didn't mean to wake you, actually. You should go back to sleep. You seem tired."_

_Light gave a wry smile._

"_I wonder why that could be…"_

"_And Light-kun calls __**me**__ a pervert," L sighed, looking up at the ceiling._

_Light yawned and rolled over; patting the bed._

"_Come in with me," he said sleepily. "You need to sleep too, you know."_

"_Mm." L merely nodded absently._

_Light didn't actually expect him to get in with him – it had been an empty offer, really. So instead he simply closed his eyes and got comfortable again, sinking back beneath the skin of sleep almost immediately. His eyes opened again, however, when he felt L indeed slide in behind him, the warm presence comfortable against his back._

"_I didn't expect… you to take me up on that offer," he said, rolling over to face him._

_L shrugged as Light snuggled up against him._

"_Maybe I won't look as beautiful as you," he murmured, "but you're right – I should sleep too…"_

"_Hmm." Light wrapped his arms around L's chest, resting his head against his throat; as L's hands rested on the crown of his head and at the crook of his elbow. "This is nice. Let's just… stay like this."_

"_For how long?"_

"_One hundred years," Light replied decisively. "We'll just stay here, you and I, exactly like this – let ivy and roses grow over us. The world can keep on moving, keep on changing, keep on rotting… But we'll stay the same, Ryuzaki. Here, asleep together."_

"_I'm afraid I couldn't do that, Light-kun," L said gravely._

"_Why not?"_

"_I couldn't go one hundred years without cake."_

_Light smiled, not opening his eyes._

"_Never mind, then," he sighed._

_And his indifference was genuine, because the destruction of their fairyland still seemed to be a century away._

* * *

…For what's it worth, it was worth all the while—

I hope you had the time of your life.

_Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)_; Green Day

* * *

**Narroch: **What a relief, it's back... I was starting to get worried about that L/Light dialog. It has been missing for so long now it seems... (we were going to send out a search party XD) But in all seriousness, this chapter was something of a breather, what with all the blood, and death, and crazy gunfights of the last two... We (I) needed a break. And this is really something of the wrap up, the final look back at what they had, what they have been though, the small but important breath before the plunge. We decided it needed its own chapter, set aside from the action, in the quiet of the night, like how all their old jaunts were staged.

**RR: **Mm hmm, so… sorry if you were on the edge of your seats (ha, tchyeah right…) prior to this update, hoping for the big bust-up that is inevitably coming, but although the actual storyline of _Poison Apple_ doesn't need this chapter, we both felt that the material in this chapter was important to the overall story we're trying to tell, so… Yeah. Sorry if this wasn't quite what you were hoping for, but it wasn't a deliberate diversion engineered specially to annoy you.

**Narroch: **But damn, Light was so schizo in this chapter! It was getting annoying after going over it for the millionth time. Hopefully it is believable that his somewhat unstable personality swings are due to his mental and physical deterioration, and not just our bad writing, heh heh.

**RR: **Honestly, even when I'm writing him, I can't decide if he needs a hug or a slap. Ha, can you _imagine_…? :)

**Narroch:** Our usual gushing and eternal gratitude for everyone who has continued to read and support this whacked out fic. Thankyou guys so much. REALLY. Thankyou. :)

**RR: **To all who wrongly guessed that _this_ chapter would be posted on Halloween…

**Narroch: **No prizes for guessing when our _next_ update will be... :p

**RR: **_Aurora_ is but a few hours away. Light seems pretty confident… but so does Near. And L? Who knows?

Us, that's who. Nyah.

TTYS, lads and luvvies!

RR and Narroch xXx


	30. Silence

ZOMG! Halloween is here again, lads and luvvies! It doesn't seem like a whole year ago that we posted up the chapter known as _Maleficent_, to the delight of some and horror of others…

Sigh, I love Halloween sooooo much. It's practically an obsession. Our front room is decked out with allsorts of crazy crap – fake spider webs, banners, a pumpkin garland, a freaky vampire version of the Mona Lisa and one of those door curtain thingies that are oh-so-fun to walk through… :)

Ha, my point being that even if Halloween didn't happen to be L's birthday, we would still update today, because Halloween is just that awesome. BUT! It _is_ L's birthday on Halloween! Yayz! Happy birthday, L, fictional (dead) character that you are! He'd be twenty-nine, bless… you know, if he wasn't a fictional (dead) character…

Anyway! Today's chapter is the Big One. It all goes down right here! O.o It's not the last chapter – there is still one more to come after today's update. Oh noes, so sad…! But, yeah… hopefully this will answer most, if not all, of everybody's questions about the happenings of _Poison Apple_!

BIG thanks to: **xXxIchigoBeyondxXx, shutupandsing, xxxyuniexxx, tsuki aoi usagi, kitoriwitch613, bluepupav, narutoclaymorelove4eva, Lyson, hittocerebattosai, Star Jinin, windearth, LawlietIsJustice, Lawliet's Angel, Tanka, No Shaking Throne, Yukari Youkai, Vermillion Lies, 4udball, gyrfalcon122, Mayumi Nakashima, Sango-maru, fantasies4eva, ayachan, TheQueenOfMediocrity, shad0wform, Celeste Goodchild, Deus3xMachina, PhoebeGilmore, BakayaroManiac, VirtualDraconium, Nardaviel, recipeforinsanity, badwolf.5, Jungle John, KiraXsama, Celestial Secrets, PikaNecoMico, L Ninja, Scripta Lexicona, Synonymous Brian, Albinokatzchen, birthname, Cween Almond, The Sacred Pandapuff, kawaiinami, Aikoss, -Red Angel-Blue Angel-, K. R. Ukido, threehoursofsleep, yellowrose87, opacus, shinimoeru, Anna P.T, Eloquent Catastrophe, imfromjupiter, Feline Jay, Smeepalicious, Ma, Mayura-Hikari-090, Layalas, Liviania, ?, TheOneWhoSitsWithTheTurtles, yourholiness, rain angst, zeppelin13, Kutsushita-socks, sayuri2023, Thoughtless7, Shooboosha **and someone else whose penname didn't show up on their review… Thanks anyway!

And enjoy the penultimate chapter! This chapter nearly killed me to write, so I really hope everyone likes it and is, more importantly, satisfied by it.

(This chapter is named _Silence_, BTW, after the twenty-fifth episode of the anime, in which L… you know…)

Silence

_He was an inverted shadow on the black sheets, a sliver of toneless neutrality across an abstract canvas; white, pure white, white as snow. His hair and his skin and his clothes._

_As silent and cold as snow, too._

_Sprawled on his back, upside-down on the bed, his head turned aside as so that his cheek rested on that black silk, his ebony eyes wide open – unseeing, and completely mirrorless. His beauty was that shattered kind, like a broken doll of purest porcelain. _

_Suddenly, the room widened, warped itself to include the one creating it, the conductor appearing in his own arrangement as the dissonance played on in the form of a mirror reflecting what he wanted most. _

_L stood with him, silent, unmoving, completely blank as he always was._

"_So now for my promise to you," Light murmured, his mouth close to L's. "Hush. Be silent, my love. Just a moment longer and you'll have it."_

_L exhaled and gave a nod; and Light wrapped his arms around his slender waist and kissed him, reverently._

"_Soon," he whispered breathlessly, "your skin will only look of snow – not feel of it." _

"_Light-kun is so kind to me," L replied._

_Light smiled and brushed back a few spikes of L's ebony hair; then let him go, turning towards the mirror they'd been standing in front of. He grasped hold of the heavy frame around it and heaved on it with all of his strength, sending the whole mirror crashing to the floor. It smashed in complete silence, scattering itself across the carpet in muted flashes of distorted reflections. In his hand, Light took up the longest shard of it he could see, closing his palm around it._

_He left L amidst the sea of scattered mirror pieces, only watching in silence, as he descended upon the small white creature lifeless on the bed and ravaged him with his blade of glass – cutting through cloth and skin, bringing blood on snow, working diligently, passionately, unrealistically, until he got what he wanted from the action._

_He cut Near's heart out of his chest as neatly as he was able. The boy hadn't moved at all, hadn't made a sound. Naturally. He left the bloodied mirror shard impaled within his gaping chest, moving away from him and off the bed, ignoring him completely now that he had what he wanted._

"_You broke your mirror," L said as Light returned him with the heart cradled in his hands._

"_I won't need it anymore," Light replied._

"_Why do you say that?"_

"_Because your eyes are the loveliest of all mirrors. They are all I will need to proclaim me fairest in the land."_

"_Light-kun __**is**__ exceptionally beautiful," L agreed quietly as Light opened his hands, stained crimson, to offer him the heart. He looked then at Light's palms, in which, like an apple, the heart rested. He tilted his head. "L, do you know Gods of Death… have red hands?"_

_Light smiled, looking at his hands himself._

"_I suppose we do." He held out the heart towards L. "And do you know love apples, L?"_

"_Yes, we do." L took the heart from him, Light holding him around his waist and chest as he forced it within his own lifeless body. He cradled him in his arms as he lowered them both to the floor – so gentle with him, so much more so than he had been with Near. In his arms, and dead, as he had been before; so Light bent and kissed him again, and though it had not been the thing to break the spell and awaken him, L stirred and opened his eyes._

_Light smiled at him._

"_You're alive, L," he murmured, offering him his stained hand. "For good. Forever."_

"_Forever, Light-kun?" L asked by way of reply, rising with Light, his pale and bloody hand clutched within his._

"_Forever," Light echoed. "You and I. I promise."_

"_You are Kira."_

"_And you are L."_

_L touched his chest, hand splayed over the place where his new heart was._

"_You gave me a replacement," he said._

"_Yes. Because you were heartless."_

"_And yet I was able to love you."_

"_You were." Light kissed him, threading his bloody fingers into his black-as-ebony hair; then trailing his mouth down the white-as-snow skin of his throat. "And you are."_

"_But obliged?"_

"_Yes. We are chained together, you and I, L. You said so yourself." Light clutched him tightly – his form warm and bony against him – and looked into his mirror-mirror eyes, gleaming and all-seeing, and a tangible force that took his breath away even within a dream. "This is all we have. This is our fairyland. All that's left. Just as we wanted."_

_L gave a nod and Light embraced him tighter still, resting his head on his shoulder._

"_Our Happy Ever After," Light whispered, his tears soaking into the white fabric of L's shirt._

"_Yes," L replied, his spiderlike fingers tracing down Light's spine. "I know."_

* * *

Once there was boy who had vibrant glow,

But as it goes, someone took it from him;  
One day through the rain I heard him meekly moan, he said  
"Will you wrap your arms around me as I'm falling?"

_- The Boy Who Destroyed The World_; AFI

* * *

It had snowed during the night. Now, as _aurora_ stained the sky with gashes of crimson and orange, dark pinks in streaks and even the slightest traces of blues and purples, that snow glimmered, untouched and virginal, on the streets of Tokyo – on windowsills and rooftops, on gardens, sidewalks and cars, on the bare branches of blackened December trees.

At dawn, there was silence.

As was there, too, within the sanctified and sacred walls of this church. Outside, at rest within snow-laden graves, the dead slept the sleep of their condition – and yet here, in the Realm of the Living, that silence was revered and echoed.

Light Yagami, in all his beauty – his black suit and white shirt and crimson tie, like that of his old school uniform – stood halfway down the center aisle, in the manner of a bride; the one working eye he had remaining fixated on the altar. Beyond it, that huge stained-glass window still stood, with the glow of dawn blazing through it, filling the inside of the cold, quiet church with a melted rainbow, flung across the floor, up the walls and along the ceiling – and over him.

He was more beautiful still for it.

Behind Light stood L, with Mello cradled in his arms. The one with the hair as black as ebony uttered not a sound, his expression stoic and emotionless; the one with the hair of sunshine gold was unconscious in his grasp, his body limp and near-lifeless, with only the shallow rise and fall of his chest to show that he was still a part of this realm, only that thin stream of air wafting between his lips keeping him there, hanging on by a thread.

The object of Light's unwavering gaze within the wombed sanctum of the church, was the boy, as pure white as the snow outside. He sat curled on the altar, towards the front, with the fingers of his right hand twisted into the waves of his hair, and a plain black notebook next to him.

The final puzzle piece to the mysteries of memory filtered down through the air in the form of letters: His name, Light could see clearly, was Nate River.

So this was the scene – The Final Curtain Light had crafted so well. And yet he found himself in dire straits. He now knew Near's name, and he had a sheet of Death Note paper and a pen with which to get rid of him once and for all.

But, equally, Near knew _his_ name. He'd called him by it – and the stolen Death Note was right there.

The moment was frosted over in a cagey standoff.

Finally, Near's mouth twitched a little, into something of a faint smile; and he rose, his monochromatic form stark and vivid against the vibrant backdrop of the stained glass window behind him. He left the Death Note where it was – confident, it appeared, that he did not need it as a threat.

"Good morning, Light," Near said politely, still twirling his hair around his finger. "An apology isn't necessary – you weren't late. I was simply early."

Light smirked.

"Eager?"

"You could say that." Near tilted his head, turning his dark eyes on Mello. "I see you brought Mello. You didn't need to do that. I believed you when you said he was alive."

Light said nothing, suddenly thrown; never mind Mello. Near didn't seem _at all_ surprised…

…to see _L_.

"It wasn't my idea," he said carefully. "…It was L's."

Near gave a nod.

"I should have guessed," he replied pleasantly.

Light blinked.

"…You are aware… that L died, aren't you?" He said slowly. After all, who knew? Maybe L's heirs hadn't been told that he'd been killed – maybe only that he was busy, or had retired, or—

"Of course." Near smiled. "The fifth of November, 2004. Both he and Watari died due to fatal cardiac arrest, instigated by Kira. That's _you_, Yagami."

"I…" Light trailed off in bewilderment.

"And I know," Near went on, "that he's been back for a while now." He seemed to have lost interest in Light now, fishing into the pocket of his pajamas in search of something; eventually surfacing with something small and white, glancing at it with a smile.

Light, however, on seeing it, went into his own pocket and pulled out the matching piece – the king, meant to stand together with the queen clutched in Near's small fingers.

"Then… you…" Light ignored Near now, turning to look at L. "This king, you… you had already…"

"Light-kun is so strange," L replied calmly, "to trust me one moment and then not trust me the next."

"_You betrayed me_!" Light shrieked at him, throwing the king down onto the carpeted floor of the church.

"That's a bit rich, coming from you," L replied expressionlessly.

"I wondered where my king went," Near interjected in grim amusement.

"Shut the fuck up, Near!" Light screeched; but he wasn't looking at him, his ruined eye only on L. "After everything we've been through, I thought… I thought that you'd finally learned to love me again, that you… that you were going to _help_ me… so that we could be happy together, at long last, but… but you just…"

"As I feared." L tilted his head. "The excellent reasoning ability I once admired in you has vanished completely. There was a time when you would never have jumped to such a hasty and misguided conclusion."

"L… _L_…" Light whispered his name desperately, at a loss for anything else to say, to plead or bargain with; as L turned away from him and gently lay Mello down on one of the church benches, brushing a few strands of gold hair from his sticky forehead; Mello reacted to the touch, opening his dark eyes a little, looking up at L, clearly fighting to stay both awake and alive—

Maybe, in this state, what flared in Light was merely jealousy at seeing this; but he seized L's wrists and dragged him around to face him again, clutching tightly at him.

"Don't you _dare_ turn your back on me!" He spat furiously. "And don't you give me your snide little observations! You're _mine_! Don't you get that, L? You gave yourself to me, you gave me _everything_, you said so yourself…! So don't think after all this you can just shake me off like some little kid, because it doesn't work like that! You think I'm deluded – but _you're_ the deluded one, if you think even for a _second_ that I'll ever let you go!"

"How possessive you are," L noted coolly. "A pity you could not have been this way when I was still alive, but nonetheless, it's touching."

Light shoved him away again in disgust.

"So you've been working with Near this whole time," he said stiffly. He clenched his fists. "I should have known."

"You should have," L agreed. "I've never been on your side, Light-kun. Never once."

"I thought this was _different_!" Light cried in exasperation.

"And it was." At this point, L turned his gaze on Near – still standing before that glowing altar. "Because, to tell the complete truth… I was not on Near's side either."

This was, apparently, news to Near – for the satisfied smile on his pale face tightened down into a grim little line, though he did not shift at all otherwise.

"…Then what, L?" Light asked quietly. "What are you doing?" He clenched his fists tighter still. "God _damn_ you, what are you _doing_, L?! Tell me before you drive me to madness! After coming back here, coming back from your grave and into my life again, not allowing me to forget you… you at least owe me the truth of that! _Why are you here_?"

"I disagree," L replied softly. "I owe you nothing, Light-kun. I am here because I have no choice – but, regardless, this situation could have been avoided. It was all down to you. You could have chosen not to pick up that notebook. You could have chosen to destroy it once you knew of its power. You could have chosen to stop being Kira. You could have chosen not to kill me." Whilst speaking, he had circled behind Light; now he stood before him, and here he stopped. "…You know, I've been thinking. I've been thinking this for a long time: You didn't murder me."

Light blinked; stunned.

"I—"

"No, you didn't. You see, for you to have _murdered_ me… you'd have to have killed me yourself. Additionally, it would have had to have been more… _passionate_. I don't mean to be romanticizing the act of killing, but… well, I know there are different degrees of murder. There are crimes of passion – a victimized wife stabbing her abusive husband after one beating too many, or a man killing his girlfriend and her lover for cheating on him behind his back. Equally, there is cold-blooded murder – a burglar shooting down a family in their own home to enable him to make a getaway with their valuables. Murder for the sake of murder. I know the difference. But do you see the difference between those scenarios and my death? Well, I say "difference" – in actuality, there are two. For one thing, you did not kill me yourself. And secondly… I had done nothing to _you_, personally, that would warrant your killing of me. I died because I stood against your regime. For "treason" against Kira. So I realized… that my death wasn't, in fact, a murder." L tilted his head, pausing; with Light breathless before him, hanging on his last word. "…It was an execution."

"I… I…" Light floundered as L turned away from him again; maybe to approach Near. It made Light's temper – precariously imbalanced as it was – flare again, and he grabbed him by the back of his collar, twisting it in his hand. "…You fucking _hypocrite_!" He seethed, jerking backwards on L's collar. "You called _me_ arrogant to take a moral high-ground on a matter such as this, and now you're doing exactly the same thing! And besides, you as good as admitted last night that if you'd known that you and Watari would be killed, you'd have had _me_ arrested and executed, to save yourself!"

"I didn't deny that just then, though, Light-kun." L didn't turn towards him – leaving Light to glare at his ebony hair instead. "Do you recall, a long time ago, a discussion we had about the possibility of me pretending that I loved you to get a confession from you? You said it would be wrong of me to then turn you in, knowing that you were Kira. I replied that it would be "selfish and unjust" to fail to hand you over to the authorities, despite my feelings for you."

"…And then _I_ said… that _love_ is selfish and unjust," Light finished softly, letting go of his collar.

"Isn't it, though?" L finally glanced over his shoulder at him; looking particularly at his ruined eye, with its bandage sloping down over it. "…Look at what it has done to us."

Light took a shuddering breath, as though attempting to process this; but then, failing to do so, and needing to find some form of release from the seething betrayal he felt, he simply threw himself into L, slamming them both to the floor of the church in tangle of limbs and hands going for throats—

"L!" Whatever silent spell had been cast over Near suddenly broke, and the teenager started down the altar steps. Though Light was aware of this, it didn't worry him. Near was even smaller than L – he could probably break every bone in his body quite easily…

"Near, stay where you are," L said calmly, with Light's hands wrapped around his neck. "Don't worry, he can't hurt me."

Near halted at the last step, black mirror-mirror eyes fixated on the sight of Kira astride L, trying to kill him even though he already had.

"This is very distracting," L went on, addressing Light now – gazing up at him emotionlessly even as the younger man tried to choke the life from him. To _murder_ him. "Ironic, too. We fight so much, Light-kun – and always have. As people, I think we are completely incompatible. I have no idea what attracted us to one another. Regardless, please don't forget the other times you have tried this. That you have _stabbed_ me, even. The only thing that seems to take my breath from my body is the Death Note – and even then, only when I possess a heart for you to stop."

Light's single eye widened, even with his hands still at L's slender neck.

"Yes, I…" He gave a hiccoughing little giggle. "…I _can't_ kill you, can I? I've tried before, you're right…" Shaking his head, Light stood, lifting his weight from the dead detective – the tilted gleam of that single amber eye falling instead upon Near. "…And I didn't come here to kill _you_, anyway, L… I came to kill your heir. I came to kill _Near_, and… and there's nothing to stop me from doing that!"

Now with a demented grin manipulating his otherwise-pretty face, Light plunged his hand into the pocket of his jacket; only, mere seconds later, for that same smirk to slide off his face as he realized that his pocket was empty but for a black biro. Stunned, he averted his gaze to L, who by now had stood.

L smiled at him almost apologetically as he reached into his own pocket and pulled out the folded sheet of Death Note paper Light had been looking for.

"You shouldn't throw yourself at me like that, Light-kun," he said with an amiable shrug.

Light's mouth opened; but for a long moment, he could form no words, no sound at all, merely twirling the biro between tight, shaking fingers.

"Fine," he bit out at length, the haughty toss of his head conveyed in his voice rather than his actions. "Good work, L. I expected nothing less, of course…" Light raised his wrist and pulled back the cuff of both his jacket and shirt, to reveal—

"I'm so glad, Light-kun," L went on, again reaching into his pocket to extract Light's watch, dangling it by the clasp in his peculiar way.

Light _stared_ at him – or, rather, at the watch, glinting in the glow of the dawn as L swung it back and forth like a lazy pendulum. It seemed for a moment he was unable to grasp the situation, but eventually his disbelief trickled down, revealing a deranged grin. He put a hand to his forehead, slid his fingers upwards into his hair, gripping at it, and then he started to laugh. He laughed long and hard, almost bent double by the degree of his mirth, laughing like Ryuk – as though he truly was amused by L's pickpocket routine. L watched him patiently, slipping the watch and the notebook sheet back into his pocket; while Near, who was more bewildered by the outburst, offered nothing at all.

"Al-alright, L…" Light gasped finally, straightening up with difficulty. "Y-you got me… No Death Note… But I wouldn't want… to disappoint you, so… so I'm really glad… I came so thoroughly prepared…" Light swiftly went under his jacket and pulled out the gun he'd taken from Mello, the final trace of his laughter the smile that remained on his face as he cocked it and aimed it straight down the church's aisle at Near.

"A gun in a church, Light-kun?" L sighed; though now obviously more on edge due to the gun being rather decidedly in Light's possession and not his own.

"Oh, shut up, L," Light snapped, not looking at him – his earlier amusement complete drained away. "What difference does it make to you? You're a freaking _atheist_, aren't you?"

"I believe in neither a theological God," L replied pleasantly, "nor in Kira, if that's what you mean."

"That's precisely what I mean."

"Oh, I'm so glad we see eye to eye… So to speak."

"I told you to shut up." That single eye of which L spoke was focused solely on Near – who gazed back at him across the gold-lit church with his huge, piercing black eyes, so like L's—

"Near, don't stay where you are," L said; it had been predictive – or, rather, provocative, as Light's finger jerked on the trigger halfway through the order.

Near, as a rule, wasn't a very fast mover; but he moved now, like a puppet on a string controlled by L, diving aside as the bullet went into the altar's carpet. Had L's warning not served as that string, it would have hit him, because even though he was half-blinded, Light was still a pretty good shot; and even then, he'd probably have gotten him with the _second_ bullet had L not effortlessly fallen back to anchor his hands on the floor and swing his legs up to deftly kick the gun out of his hand and sending it flying away across the floor, far out of Light's reach. It came to rest under one of the church benches, up towards the altar as L recovered from the maneuver.

"_What the fuck are you doing_?!" Light screeched, shoving L away from him and backing up several paces, his eye wide and wild. "Whose side are you _on_, L?! You let Matt die to save me, as good as _let_ me capture Mello, and yet now you actively _prevent_ me from killing Near – even though you just said that you _weren't_ on his side?!"

Straightening slowly, Near brushed some of his snow-white hair back from his pale face, his expression growing yet more bewildered.

"L… You _let_ Kira kill Matt?" He asked quietly; he glanced at Mello, still and silent on the church bench L had put him to rest – he appeared to still be breathing, albeit extremely shallowly, but was otherwise lifeless. "…You _let_ this happen to Mello…?"

"Then you want to know, too," L said by way of an evasive reply, "just whose "side" I'm on."

Near's dark eyes narrowed.

"I'd appreciate that, yes," he answered stiffly.

"I'm afraid there is no great universal truth to my answer," L said, with a show of mock-remorse. "I'm on the side I've been on since Day One – quite simply, _mine_."

Despite the – understandable – caginess between them, Light and Near were now united in their general dissatisfaction with L's selfish and shameless declaration of self-love; Light folded his arms, glaring at him.

"What about "justice", Mighty Detective?" He mocked. "Isn't that you died for?"

L smiled lazily at him.

"I didn't die for justice. We both know that. Didn't we discuss this very recently, in fact? I died only because I was in your way." His smile twisted to become a shade darker. "…It's odd that you should mention _justice_, though, Light-kun…"

Light's stance became guarded immediately, unfolding his arms to once again clench his fists at his sides.

"And what exactly do you mean by that?" He spat.

L gave a little sigh and looked up at the high Gothic ceiling of the radiant church for a long moment, making rather a show of thinking deeply.

"Well," he said finally, his voice very serene – indeed, his entire demeanor thoroughly composed, as though he'd been preparing himself for this for quite some time; "…I suppose I have imposed upon you long enough, Light-kun, distracting you with my petty revenges and odd little whims, sometimes being nice to you and at other times most certainly not… You've asked me a lot of questions since that day we both returned to this plane of existence, and I have answered very few of them. In other words, Light, Near, Mello… If you would care to listen to me, I will finally put aside that very bad habit I have of lying and tell you the truth."

Light offered nothing at all; unspeaking, unmoving, in the middle of the church aisle. Opposite, before the altar, Near mirrored this response; and Mello could not have listened even if it had been his wish to. There was no answer to give – nothing to do but allow L to speak, for it was he who held all the cards, just as he always had.

"_Justice_," he said again at length, twisting his long pale hands together. "Now let's see, how would we define that…? Arguably, we could say that there is no true categorical definition of that word, since it hinges entirely upon an individual's interpretation of it – for example, what was "justice" to Kira was not "justice" to me, as L, hence our differing viewpoints on your regime. Still, for the sake of an argument, let's identify its meaning simply as a noun – or, to be more specific, as a practice. Justice, as a "thing", is basically a maintenance of order within any kind of society, pertaining to predefined rules or laws that are agreed to be fair and non-discriminatory. It was on this principle that we both acted, Light-kun – you against the sinners of the world, and I against you. Therefore I think we can agree that this began because of justice – thus it should end that way too, do you not concur?"

"…I… I don't understand," Light replied quietly, quite at a loss for a more articulated answer.

"Justice is about order," L went on, ignoring him. "That's what it comes down to. Balance. Fairness. …Isn't that what I've always said? Once is once…"

"…An eye for an eye," Light finished faintly; absently, barely realizing he was doing it, touching the bandage over his own ruined eye.

L smiled icily at him.

"That's right. It's all cause and effect. That's how the world works – and to narrow it down, to condense it all into our _own_ little world, Light-kun… _we_ were governed by that same set of rules. Our relationship? You raped me, so I raped you back. We fight, and have always fought, because we cannot reach common ground. We cannot agree what is fair and what isn't – and yet, by that constant paying back in kind, we _make_ things fair between us, do you see? As I said, I consider it to probably be abnormal, but it seems to work. I am about to make my point, by the way – in case you are wondering where it is exactly that I'm going with this."

"And what _is_ this point of yours, L?" Light spat in reply. "…Are you going to kill me? Is that what you're going to say? I took your life, so you'll take mine?"

L gave a cold little laugh.

"Light-kun, as I have said to you many times before, the reason for my being here is not one of personal revenge, so stop flattering yourself. If that _were_ the case, it would not be an expression of my love for you, you know – it would simply be an obsession with wreaking vengeance on you so great and disturbing that it disallows me to rest. As I said, it was not my choice to return here. The moment I fell still in your arms on the fifth of November, 2004, I was done with this world, and this existence. I did not want to die, but once dead, I had no interest in coming back. The truth is, I was _sent_ back."

"So you _were_ thrown out of Heaven."

"Not "thrown out", exactly. "Summoned from" is a better way of putting it. Because of _you_, you understand."

"Why?" Light bit out. "Because we're _chained together_? Because of what we've shared?"

"Nothing as romantic as that, I'm afraid." L gave a shrug. "It's actually a coincidence – that I happen to have been "involved" with you, shall we say? To tell the truth, my presence here before you actually has nothing to with anything we've shared. Our love, as I said last night, is largely meaningless, even nonexistent, in the grand scale of things."

"Then why are you _here_, L?!" Light cried in desperation. "What has dragged you from the sleep of your grave, if neither love nor vengeance?!"

"Because," L replied calmly, "_I_ was the last person to be killed by Rem before her death – my name was the last name she wrote before she died for breaking that one rule all Shinigami must abide by. Had she written Watari's name _after_ mine, then Watari would be standing here now – not me. Regardless, that is why."

Light stared at him, opening his mouth – but no words came to his tongue. The rug was being pulled out from under him, and everything was crashing down. The hope that had been so sustaining, that their love could cause even death to roll back its skeletal hands, was suddenly ripped away from him. There was nothing personal about L's presence on Earth, no abiding truth of their relationship, only a simple clerical rule. The revelation shocked Light into mute stillness. Likewise, for his silence, Near might as well have not been present at all; although it was certainly true that this conversation did not really included him.

This was between Kira and L – as always.

"Perhaps you're wondering what that has to do with _you_," L went on, filling in for Light's speechlessness. "And that would be a fair question, since, as far as the Death Notes and Shinigamis themselves go, "Kira" is nothing. Kira is a human creation – a personification of "justice" invented by one human who happened to come into the possession of a Death Note. There is no rule in any Death Note that specifically says "The human who uses this notebook shall become the being known as Kira". So "Kira" doesn't matter to Shinigamis, and so why should _you_, Light Yagami?"

Still Light's voice failed him; even as he wracked his brain, able only to settle upon one conclusion, the only plausible reason why any Shinigami, even those less bored and less interested in humans than Ryuk, would give a damn about him—

"It's because," L supplied softly, "you killed a Shinigami."

"I didn't _kill_ Rem!" Light spat defensively; even though this was the conclusion he himself had reached. "She chose to save Misa herself, even though she knew she'd die. Besides, if she hadn't been so fucking _obsessed_ with Misa in the first place, she could have killed you and Watari without dying herself!"

L merely shrugged.

"You have a point, Light-kun, but the fact remains that you deliberately engineered a situation that would force Rem into action – you gambled with Misa's life to end mine, and although you won, you committed an extremely grave sin."

"So…" There were traces of an incredulous laugh coloring Light's voice as he spoke. "…You're saying that… it's really just a coincidence that _you_ of all people were sent back to me, because I forced Rem to her death?"

"That is correct."

"But that—" Light started.

"That explains nothing," Near cut in from behind them. "That's only the _process_ by which you are here, L – not the reason."

L shot Near a wry smile over his shoulder.

"You're right, of course," he said softly; he shrugged. "Well, I did promise to be honest from here on, so… Mm, it's difficult to… put into _words_, though. I think it would be better to skip the explanation and just show you…"

"Wh-what… what are you doing?" Light demanded, his eye widening a little as he saw L slip his left hand into the sleeve of his right.

(Maybe it was a fear trained into him by now – after all, that was where L had always hidden his aces…)

"Well, I'm going to show you…" L looked up, his dead black eyes locking on Light, and only on him – as though Near wasn't there at all. "…How I wish Light-kun would make up his mind about me. It's strangely tiring for him to love me, then hate me, then fear me—"

"Did you ever consider how natural a reaction that is to someone like _you_?" Light spat, trying to tear his wrist out of L's grip as his long pale fingers wrapped around it. "Let go of me!"

"But you wanted the truth, Light-kun, and in a way, I suppose I owe it to you – after all, I asked you to confess to the half of me that was human, and you did, though it benefited you nothing…"

Light's wrist went limp in L's grasp as his single brown eye met with the lifeless obsidian orbs that were L's.

"What do you mean… '_human_'…?" He repeated quietly.

"This," L replied, offering Light the tiny scrap of paper he had taken from within his sleeve.

Light hesitated, reaching for it, but not quite daring to touch it and take it; recoiling his hand when L tried to push it towards him.

"So after so long of wanting the truth more than anything else, you're afraid of it when it is within your grasp," L sighed; he gave a sad little smile. "…I know the feeling, Light-kun. Still…" Again he held out the scrap towards Light. "…It's now or never."

Light averted his gaze briefly with a sigh; then glanced back at him, and in the same movement took the tiny scrap of paper from his fingers. He looked down at it, turning his attention away from L – turning it over in puzzlement.

It was blank on both sides.

There was no message, no symbol, no spade… nothing.

"L, I don't understand," he sighed, looking up at him again. "There's nothing—" Light cut himself off with a strangled sound – something that might have been the beginning of a scream, but which caught in his throat like a bite of poison apple, the action completely stunned out of him.

The little slip of paper fell from between Light's slack fingers, floating to the church floor, as he stared at L, utterly speechless – as though his voice had been torn right out of his throat. For, indeed, while L still stood before him in exactly the same place, with even his expression unchanging, his appearance now was drastically different, and Light realized that it must have been his touching of the paper that allowed him to see L this way—

That, in fact, L had looked this way all along.

"Y-you're… you're an _angel_," Light managed to get out, his voice threatening to fail him even as he forced the words out.

He made this assumption based on the fact that L was dressed all in white – white so pure it seemed unreal, like the snow that falls only in dreams, so unbelievably white that it's exactly that: Unbelievable. There were familiarities about this pure attire, however – the fact that his feet were still bare, or that the white top was long-sleeved, though it had a wider, lower neckline, the seams sewn with black cross-stitching, reminiscent of the same lacing over his heart. The trousers differed greatly from the jeans he'd been giving the illusion of wearing, however – matching the shirt, wide and white, with that haphazard black stitching. The belt at his waist was wide, white leather edged with silver, from which hung a few differing lengths of chain; and around his neck was a single, simple band of white, maybe ribbon – almost the color of his skin.

Still, the mark of the "angel" label Light had given him fell most prominently on the pair of wings that fanned out behind him, beginning from his slender shoulders. These too were white – fairly large, feathered and bird-like, yet with spiny webbing protruding at the bottom, sprouting off where the feathers ended. It was an unnatural amalgamation of different parts, spliced on top of an already awkward human body, but even with this truth, there was nothing awkward about him. The wings exuded a sense of power, mastery of an element far beyond the reach of Light's limited human ways. They were even delicate in their construction, not overbearing of L's slight frame, simply expanding his outline and creating awe within Light, enough so that he had even called him an angel – something that he never thought possible of equating with L.

"But I don't have a halo, Light-kun," L said mildly.

Light gave a shake of his head, breathing shallowly as his eyes adjusted to the strange sight.

"No," he realized, rubbing distractedly at his auburn hair. "No, not… not an angel…" He raised his head again, gazing almost desperately at L, because now he'd reached the correct conclusion. "…You're a _Shinigami_."

"Well, more or less," L agreed calmly. "To be completely accurate, I am in fact only a half-breed Shinigami. I could never wholly be a true Shinigami – I was once a human." L turned towards Near. "This conversation must be confusing for you, Near; since to you, I look as I always have."

Near looked at L icily.

"Yes, I admit that you don't look like an "angel" to me," he bit out.

"Hm." L glanced about. "Where has that piece of paper gone…? No matter – here." L pushed aside the chains hanging from his belt – they'd been obscuring the white leather clasp strapped to it, within which… "That scrap of paper came from this anyway, so if you touch this, it will have the same effect."

L held up the Death Note – identical in every way to all of the others but for the fact that its cover was white. Near, whilst he could not see L's "quasi-Shinigami" form, was able to see this, and slowly came down the altar steps. L neatly tossed it towards him, turning back to Light even as Near made for the notebook, which had landed several feet shy of him.

"No, I…" Light clenched his shaking fists, unable to tear his gaze away from L. "…There are still too many things that just don't make sense, if you… this can't be…"

"Such as, Light-kun?"

"Humans… a human and a Shinigami can't have sex," Light spat. "I know they can't. It was written down in Ryuk's notebook."

"That rule would apply only to a true Shinigami," L replied. "Let me clarify – without a heart, I am a Shinigami, more or less. When you gave me a heart, I became human again. Human, and alive. You'll recall that time you attempted to have intercourse with me, before it was to your knowledge that I could be revived with a heart? It was cold and uncomfortable for you – so much, in fact, that you were unable to even reach climax. The truth is, it's not physically impossible for a Shinigami and a human to have sex – simply forbidden, and, as I'm sure you'll agree, extremely uncomfortable. However, since I am not a true Shinigami, that rule does not apply to me. Nothing detrimental came of your attempted liaison with me that night, save for your own personal discomfort. And, as before, with a heart, I am rendered as human. Therefore, intercourse is most certainly possible."

"Then why… why couldn't I see you as a Shinigami until right now?" Light demanded. "All this time you've been back, haunting me… you've looked like… well, like _this_, right? So why couldn't I see you?"

"Well, to explain that, I suppose we have get into the mechanics of the situation we find ourselves in." L paused at this, looking back at Near – who was staring at him in that same spellbound silence, clutching the white Death Note to his chest. "Do I like an angel to you now, Near?"

Near mutely nodded, the movement slight – his ebony eyes wide. L returned his attention again to Light on this assurance.

"Where to begin…" L averted his gaze to the church ceiling again. "You see, it's not as simple as those little fairytales we like to talk about, Light-kun – because fairytales don't run on logic, and are not governed by order. We could say that there is _justice_ in them, certainly, since it would simply be a fairytale that is told wrongly if, for example, either Snow White or Sleeping Beauty had not been awakened and given their happy ever afters. Their simplicity is their strength in the sense of their literary value, but it does, by and large, make them incomparable to the mechanics of life itself. In other words: It's just not that simple. …Still, if I had to choose somewhere to begin, I think the best place would be my death – not because _I_ died, you see. As I said before, the reason for why I stand before you now, as this "spliced" Shinigami, is only because my name was the last one she wrote down before Rem herself died. So let's begin there, since the two factors – my death and Rem's death – are thus connected. Now, Light-kun… you seem to know about rules. Rules about Death Notes and Shinigamis, I mean – you just rattled one off there, without any kind of prompting on my part, and, incidentally, you know them well enough to manipulate them to your advantage, even creating _fake_ ones… I do wonder if you are aware that there is a rule – unwritten, most likely – that says it is forbidden for a human to kill a Shinigami?"

Light opened his mouth, most likely to defend himself against this; but L headed him off:

"Light-kun, I appreciate at this point that it is probably trained into you to deny any and every accusation thrown at you – but I must impress on you that while it's true that you did not _personally_ kill Rem, if it were not for your actions, she would not have died. She could have killed me without dying if Misa had not been in immediate danger from me – you forced the situation so that Misa _was_ in that kind of danger, leaving Rem with no choice. Deny it all you want, but the facts speak for themselves – you _wanted_ Rem to give up her life for Misa. It is an indirect responsibility that is, nonetheless, your responsibility. It is classed as a "killing of a Shinigami by a human" because, quite simply, there is no other way _for_ a human to kill a Shinigami."

"And that's why _you're_ here?" Light asked sullenly.

"That's why I was _sent_ here, Light-kun. The Shinigami Realm works on balance – you of all people should know that. If a human wants the Shinigami Eyes, they must give up half of their life. If a Shinigami saves a human's life, then they must forfeit their own. Eye for an eye, so to speak. And, as you know, there are rules. As far as killing goes, Shinigamis can kill humans with Death Notes – they are not allowed to kill or badly injure a human by any other means. This, incidentally, is why I did not actually gouge out your eyes when I was inclined to. As for humans, themselves… They are perfectly within their rights, as far as Shinigami rules go, to kill one another with or without Death Notes. Humans are _not_ within their rights to kill Shinigamis. That's not how it works. Shinigamis exist to kill humans – not vice versa. So… there must be balance, if a crime of that nature is committed by a human. _Justice_, shall we say?"

Light smiled bitterly.

"So you _have_ come here to kill me," he said coldly. "If that was the case, then there really was no need for you to drag it out like this, L. And Ryuk used to call _me_ a drama queen…"

"Kill you?" L tilted his head. "Not quite."

"I…" Light faltered again; but L had turned back to Near.

"Near, if I might have my notebook back…?" He asked, approaching the small, pale boy.

Near's eyes narrowed at him, still holding the snow-white Death Note.

"You've just been using me, haven't you?" He stated rather than asked. "Mello, Matt and I, to lure Yagami into your trap."

L gave a cryptic smile.

"You could say that," he replied.

Near gave an icy smirk of his own in reply and handed over the notebook.

"You're going to write my name in that, aren't you?" Light hissed as he saw L take it back from his heir.

"Believe it or not, not all of my actions revolve around you, Light Yagami," L said frostily.

"But you're _here_ because of me," Light spat in frustration. "Because… because I _killed_ Rem."

"That is correct." L gave an absent shrug as he passed Light. "More or less."

"Wait—!" Light whirled, keeping his gaze on L as the quasi-Shinigami as he went, notebook in hand, to the church bench on which Mello was sprawled, barely breathing. "There's so much… you didn't answer my question!"

"About why you couldn't see me for what I am?" L knelt next to Mello, folding his wings as thought to accentuate this point. "In time, Light-kun. First, I'm going to show you something – well, show _and_ tell, to be precise. Something I'll bet even _you_ didn't know about Death Notes…"

He held up his own, as snow-white as his skin and attire.

"This is a brand new Death Note," he said. "This is the usual practice, of course – new Shinigami, half-breed or not, new notebook. Standard stuff; but here's where it gets interesting. As I have explained, the reason for my presence here is due to the death of the Shinigami Rem, as caused by you, Light Yagami. As such, I suppose I am her "replacement" – though I have a rather more basic purpose. Judging you, you see, as opposed to killing humans to even out the Earth's population. Now, pay attention to this: As I said, this Death Note of mine is brand new. There is not a single name within it, nor has there ever been. This is, at present, what makes it so special. As I said, the Shinigami Realm in particular is all for bargains and trades. In saving a human, a Shinigami must die. In killing a Shinigami, a human cannot expect to go unpunished. And yet… When a Shinigami saves a human, though that Shinigami dies, there remains a life in balance. It seems like a never-ending circle, to be honest – a human is destined to die, a Shinigami intervenes, that Shinigami dies, and then there remains the power to cancel out the death of a human as written within a Death Note, in payment for the life of that Shinigami."

"I… But that doesn't…" Light frowned, barely able to comprehend this new piece of information. "Surely… the life given by that Shinigami – like Rem, or Gelus – is the payment for the extended lifespan of the human who was supposed to die – Misa, in both instances."

"No," L replied, "because the life forfeited by the Shinigami is a _punishment_ for breaking the rules of the Shinigami Realm. It is not the action of dying itself that enables a Shinigami to save a human. The key word is "save", by the way – this cancellation cannot give life to the dead. …My point is, that single cancellation is carried within this new Death Note of mine, given to me, as Rem's replacement, because it was her death that created that cancellation to begin with."

"…Then that means there was another cancellation at some point," Light said, "when Gelus died. I guess… it would have been in the notebook that Rem gave to Misa – the one that used to be Gelus'."

"It is unlikely that it was ever used. You would use a cancellation only on someone whose name had already been written down in another Death Note. If either Misa or you had written down the same person's name twice in that notebook, then the second time would have cancelled the first and saved that person from death. Since I think it is unlikely that either of you wrote down someone's name twice, then that cancellation most likely still stands." L shot Light a twisted smile at this point. "On the other hand, someone that the cancellation in my own Death Note would most _certainly_ work on… would be _Mello_."

The color completely drained out of Light's face, leaving him pallid even for the melted spectrum of stained-glass-glow upon his form. It was all too easy to be overwhelmed by L – be he detective, corpse or slapdash-Shinigami – and be sucked into his reasoning, be walked all over by him, because Light had let that happen countless times before; but as much of a staggering blow as this had been, Light _couldn't_ allow him to just do what he liked while he stood by and watched, shell-shocked.

His hands clenched themselves into fists again and he stormed towards L, who had flipped open his brand-new Death Note and now knelt before the boy with hair of sunshine gold, pen poised.

"L, if you think I'm going to just let you revive Mello—" He started angrily.

"Shut up, Light-kun," L interrupted dismissively, ignoring him as he started to write.

"No, I won't _let_ you!" Light screeched, hands unfurling themselves again as he flung them outwards towards L, meaning to snatch the notebook from him and throw it away—

"Stop it, Yagami – or I'll write _your_ name down," Near snapped from further down the aisle. His eyes narrowed as Light swung wildly to face him, still standing very close to L; the other white creature had returned to his place before the altar, and had retrieved the other Death Note, the one he had brought along himself. Like L, he stood with it open before him, pen pressed to the paper. "…And believe me, it'll kill you."

His shoulders shaking, whether with rage or fear, Light could only lock gazes with Near – his own hateful and sulky, Near's cold and impassive, with the eyes of the dead man who knelt but a few paces from Light at this very moment. He was ensnared in their web, tangled immovably between L and Near, and was powerless to do anything about it. He had no Death Note, not even a scrap, no gun, and no plan.

So he stood silent, mentally cursing himself from taking his attention from Near. This was about the third time he'd done so, distracted by L and his blasé onslaught of revelations.

L himself rose, stepping backwards away from the bench so that he stood next to Light; the open Death Note in his hands clearly showed the words 'Mihael Keehl' in English. He didn't look at Light, his gaze on Mello, who, after another long moment of lying almost completely still, suddenly shuddered and coughed, breathing in large gulps before opening his eyes, taking several seconds to focus, and several more seconds to comprehend exactly who he was looking at, as though awakening from some spellbound sleep.

Satisfied, L closed his Death Note – revealing, as he did so, that the cover had now faded from luminous white to the usual black hue.

Mello sat up, his entire demeanor visibly guarded; turning his narrowed gaze on L – who, to him, looked no different than he had before. He opened his mouth, presumably to fire off at L again… and then he saw Light standing a little way behind the dead detective. His mouth twisted into a cruel smile as he rose from the bench, the entire motion liquid and coiled with irrefutable hatred.

"Nice little poison apple trick you have there, wicked queen," he bit out. "You really should read to the end of that fairytale, though – I'll think you'll find that the princess doesn't stay dead."

Light exhaled deeply, saying nothing. He had nothing to defend himself with against Mello, and now, with Mello's death warrant repealed – and Light himself still rather worse for wear due to missing eyes and bullet bruises – the enraged teenager would probably succeed in murdering him, were he to get hold of him. Light wasn't weak, but he'd found even _L_ difficult, often impossible, to overpower at times, even without the injuries he was sporting now. Still, he was as ready as he could ever be to defend himself physically against the most aggressive of L's heirs—

L, however, seemed to take responsibility for his heir himself, stepping between Light and Mello as he had with Matt.

"Oh, here we go," Mello snapped before L could say a word. "The 'Please Don't Kill My Mass-Murderer Boyfriend Even Though He Killed Me And Would Also Kill You Given Half the Chance' card, right?"

"Do you think this is about love, Mello?" L asked quietly.

"Don't fuck with me, L," Mello replied icily; his piercing gaze fell on the Death Note clutched in L's hand. "So you _have_ joined him," he added grimly. "I thought as much. I got to thinking it while I was dying from the poison your lover fed me. You know, the one you didn't seem to care about." Mello attempted to snatch L's Death Note from him – he didn't succeed in pulling it from his grip, but didn't pursue the matter, instead snatching his hand back with a stifled yell as his contact with the notebook revealed L's true form to him.

"—Freaking _demon_!" Mello hissed, backing away from him.

"No, Mello," Near said, attracting Mello's attention from the first time since his awakening. "He's a Shinigami – and he just saved your life."

"He could have saved both my life _and_ Matt's earlier if he'd just killed Yagami," Mello spat in reply.

"I wasn't sent here to kill Light," L said quietly. "If you must know, Mello, I am not _allowed_ to kill him. I am not allowed to let anyone or anything kill him."

"Why couldn't I see you like that until I touched that heebie-jeebie notebook of yours?" Mello demanded.

L tilted his head, his wings fluttering slightly as though amused.

"This question again? Very well, I suppose now that you can all see my true form, I can answer it. I am not a true Shinigami – my form is created from my corpse, in essence. As far as true Shinigami go, they can only be seen by a human who has touched the Death Note they are attached to. With me, my true form can be seen only by those who have touched my own Death Note – otherwise, I can be seen in a "human" form. Incidentally, when I was restored to life completely via the hearts so kindly given to me by Light-kun, this form you see now did, in fact, disappear, since I became fully human."

Mello was no less disgusted by this information than he had been about L apparently not being allowed to kill Light, and looked over his shoulder at Near. The fact that he was glaring at Light and holding a Death Note, apparently ready to use it, seemed to bump him a little above zero on the 'Mello's Respect for Near' scale, and he reasoned that if he had to pick a side here, he'd rather be on Near's, since it was the lesser of two evils.

Besides, there was a gun lying not even a few feet from where Near was standing.

Not taking his eyes off L, despite the chill crawling down his spine at L's "true" form, Mello backed away carefully, picking up the gun and coming to rest next to Near, raising the weapon and aiming it in the direction of both L and Light.

L gave a lazy smile.

"How nice it is to see you two teaming up instead of fighting," he mused.

"L, don't think I won't fucking shoot you," Mello snapped.

Near looked askance at Mello briefly, before turning his gaze back on L and Light.

"We're in dire straits, then," he observed emotionlessly. "Mello and I both have means to kill Light Yagami, Light Yagami would like to kill us both very much but is powerless to do so, and L won't let any of us kill each other, anyway."

"Shame he didn't turn into the Anti-Death Fairy until _after_ he let Yagami kill Matt," Mello hissed.

Near gave a nod of agreement, though his expression was immovable.

"I warned both you and Matt not to come back to that Kira HQ building," L said coldly. "And I warned you not you come back because I knew that if a situation accumulated where it was either your life or Light's, I would have to allow Light to kill you. That, incidentally, is exactly what happened with Matt."

"So that's why… you gave the impression of working with me," Near said, heading Mello off. "Telling me to bide my time, not to pursue Yagami until you told me it was safe to. You weren't _helping_ me, you were just… keeping me away from him, to keep me alive."

L nodded.

"Thankfully you're a much better listener than either Mello or Matt," he replied coldly.

"I don't understand, L," Light murmured, stepping level with the quasi-Shinigami despite the fact that Mello had a gun squarely aimed at both of them. "You're a "Shinigami", replacing Rem, and Shinigamis kill humans – yet you're not allowed to kill me, or allow anyone else to. You're here because I killed Rem, but… as before, you're not allowed to kill me…?"

"I'm not the only one who is here because of Rem's death," L replied softly, addressing all of them. "Light-kun, you'll understand this best of all. This is something of a reversed time-zone – that is, you have half-memories of things that "haven't happened yet". Actually, to be accurate, this isn't a _reversed_ time-zone; it's an _alternate_ one. And, to be specific, it's an alternate one slanted very greatly against your victory, Light-kun. This is not because you are Kira, but, as I said, because you killed Rem. This is a new "existence", stemmed off from a certain point in your own history. This much you have probably realized yourself, due to the great differences between this existence and the one you can partially remember. You're here as the human who killed a Shinigami. You are the central tie of this time-zone. I am here as the last human to have been killed by Rem before her own death. As I said, I wasn't sent here to kill you—"

"Then why _were_ you sent here, L?!" Light cried in frustration.

"To judge you – as you have judged others, ironically. Like you as Kira, I hold the key to your punishment, yet I do not know exactly what that punishment is."

"I knew what the punishment was," Light said quietly. "It was death."

"And what do you know of death, Light-kun? What do you know of its mechanics, really? After your death in that alternate existence, you were sent to Mu. Nothingness, that is. That is not knowing death. That is experiencing it."

"L…" Light felt the panic rising up in him again, nauseous and irrepressible, as he grabbed desperately at the dead man. "…Am I going to be sent back to Mu? I-I don't want to go back there…!"

L shrugged nonchalantly.

"I don't know, Light-kun. Isn't that what I said? I have never killed a Shinigami – I don't know what kind of punishment is fit for a human that does so."

"But… but you…" Light grabbed hold of L and shook him in desperation. "Y-you said you hold the key, L…! As in, you're the only one with the ability to give me that punishment! So you… you don't _have_ to do anything to me, you could just… you could—"

"I could just let you go, you mean."

Light nodded, distractedly taking L's hand and playing with it – his own hands visibly shaking.

"Like how _you_ let _me_ go?" L went on icily, pulling his hand away from Light.

"You said you were above being petty about that!" Light snapped, still visibly panicked (after all, L had never been as easy to talk around as Misa, and even Misa, that last time, had slipped very certainly through his fingers).

"I'd hardly call it petty," L replied stiffly. "Besides, your pleading and smooth-talking is worthless now, Light-kun. You might say that you love me, or reason that I love you in return – however much truth is in either or those statements, that love is worthless. Shinigami bargains do not take love into their equations. I do have to judge you, I'm afraid. That's why I was sent here. Do you want to know what will happen if I _don't_ judge you?"

"What?" Light asked breathlessly.

"This time-zone will reverse itself again, on a loop – again and again and again, until I _do_ judge you—"

"I don't care!" Light wailed, grabbing at L again. "I'd _prefer_ that…!"

"_You'd_ prefer it?" L snapped, pushing Light away from him angrily. "And what about _me_? You did this to me, Light-kun. You killed me, and then I was taken out of Heaven and sent back here, to judge you, because you killed a Shinigami." He hit himself on chest, as though to signal his own body. "You know this by now – this is a _corpse_. This body, which had all but rotted to bones, was restored as a faux Shinigami, and then I was crammed back into it, all because of _you_. On top of that, you've revived and killed me three more times… I swear I'll go mad if I have to suffer any more because of you, Light Yagami, so I _wouldn't_ prefer it if this time-zone reversed itself yet again."

"You don't get it," Light argued. "We can change this, L – what you've been given doesn't have to be the only option. I was going to get you another heart, a permanent one, and then you'd come back to life, and you… well, you said that when you were "human", you were completely human, and not a Shinigami anymore, so then you'd be free of the duty you have of judging me—"

"True love conquers all," L interrupted, grimly amused. "A lovely, romantic, fairytale happily ever after. Why are you still chasing that, Light-kun? Haven't you realized by now that we aren't getting one?"

"No, you're wrong, L." Light gripped the dead detective's wrists again. "We can rewrite it, change the world—"

"It was you trying to "change the world" that landed us all here in the first place, Kira-kun," L snapped. "Where were you going to get this "permanent heart", anyway?"

"Near," Light whispered. "I thought… well, you have the same eyes, and…"

L gave an icy little laugh.

"I might have known you'd come to a ridiculous conclusion like that," he said, finally pulling his wrists from Light's grip. "Incidentally, there _is_ a heart that will give me my life back – but it isn't Near's. …Still, I will not ask you for it, Light-kun."

He pulled himself from Light completely and began to drift away down the aisle, wings sweeping behind him like a cape as he approached his heirs; Light sank to his knees, by himself and in complete silence, on the carpet, with his hands at his own heart.

Though Mello and Near said nothing as L came closer to them, they were united in their implacable stance, with Mello's hand tightening on the gun.

He stopped before the altar steps and looked up at them.

"I'm sorry," he said, speaking English.

"For what?" Mello snapped. "Matt?"

"For Matt, yes. But for choosing you. For choosing all of you. As I said, this title of mine is nothing but a death knell – and choosing heirs was like choosing gifted children to line up before a firing squad. I apologize for that. It was selfish of me."

"You talk about it as if it's _your_ war," Near replied stoically. "That's more selfish, I think."

L smiled wryly.

"Perhaps." He looked between Mello and Near. "I want you to do something for me. Both of you." He held out his Death Note. "This makes this the fourth one on the Earth, I believe. Near is holding the one that was once Rem's. There are two others – the one which belonged to Misa Amane, and the original one dropped on the Earth, the one that used to belong to Light. I think the latter one is still in police custody. Unfortunately I can't say for certain where the fourth, Amane's one, is. All I know is that Light gave it back to the Shinigami known as Ryuk. I want you both to gather all of them, and then I want you to destroy them."

Mello eyed both the notebook and L icily for a long moment, then reached out and took it from him with his free hand.

"Thankyou," L went on. "I would advise neither of you to use them, by the way. You heard what Light said about Mu – specifically, that he has no desire to go back there."

He turned away from them both again, starting to make his way back towards Light.

"What are you going to do?" Near asked quietly.

L shrugged.

"I was sent back for this. I don't know what will happen to me once I have served my purpose. …I don't know what is going to happen to Light, either."

"This is very dramatic, I have to say," Near went on, slightly amused. "A church, at sunrise, with us all here. Was this necessary?"

"No, but I felt I owned you an explanation. Or an apology, at any rate."

"Two birds with one stone," Mello muttered darkly.

"You could say that." L walked away from them. "Don't forget your promise."

Light was still kneeling on the aisle floor with his head bowed when L stopped before him, his shadow falling across him.

"L," Light said, not looking up. "I'll give you my heart. You can have it. I don't care that I'll die."

"Light-kun…" L knelt before Light, lifting his chin so that he could see him properly. "…I don't want your heart."

"But… but you said…" Light looked at him hopelessly. "Y-you said that there was something you wanted, and you couldn't ask for it… It was my heart, wasn't it? Well, you can have it! I'll give it to you, I promise!" He grabbed at L's hand, bringing it towards his chest. "Here, take it. You can take it while I'm still alive…! I don't care how much it hurts… I… I don't…"

Light fell against him, sobbing – yet it was the sobbing of someone exhausted and overwhelmed, rather than due to any particular sadness or even manipulative behavior in the form of a tantrum. He was simply beaten down, stripped of reason. With no Death Note, no global dream of god-hood, no chance of winning, all he had left to cling to was his love, and to him, it seemed the only way to show that love would be to make the ultimate sacrifice, paradoxical as it was.

"I don't want your heart," L said again, letting Light grab at him. "It was the _offer_ than meant the most to me. More than anything else you've done, even blinding yourself, the offer to give up your life so that I could live shows your love. It's true that your heart would revive me, Light-kun, and give me my life back, for much longer than a mere twenty-three days. But… I don't want that. I'm done with this existence. I'm not needed anymore. If I was to live now, there would be only reason for it – to be with you. And yet, for me to be given that chance, you would have to die… so where is my reason?"

"_It's so hopeless_," Light whispered against L's chest. "Why… why are we constantly torn apart? Why can't we… we…"

"On the contrary, we're chained together. We always have been. Even a little thing like death couldn't keep us apart."

Light looked up at him, blinking away the tears from his working right eye.

"You… said it was a coincidence that you were sent back."

"It was." L smiled dryly. "A very convenient one." He stood up slowly, bringing Light up with him, clutching his hand. "I want you to come with me."

"Where?"

"I don't know. I don't know what's waiting for you. Regardless, I'm going to come with you."

"I…" Light gazed at him a long moment. "…_Why_?"

"What else is left for me? Besides…" L held up his wrist, as though jingling the handcuff that had rested there for all those months.

"But… I _killed_ you," Light whispered.

"And you love me as something more than simply 'L'. You're the only person who has ever done either."

"I do," Light pressed, wrapping his arms around L's neck. "I love you more than anything. I—"

Light cut himself with a sudden cry of pain as there came a deafening bang – definitely that of a gun – and a sudden spray of hot blood from his right side. He crumpled in L's arms, grasping at his wound as it slung burning bolts of pain through his entire limb, up to the joint. Clutching Light, L turned to face his heirs; he should have known better than to trust Mello to leave Light alone—

It was not Mello holding the smoking gun. It was Near.

He had clearly snatched it out of Mello's hand and fired it in the same motion; Mello, incidentally, looked thoroughly stunned and even a little impressed. It was obvious that Near knew nothing about either aiming or firing a gun, however. He was standing on the bottom step of the altar, deathly pale, his ebony mirror-mirror eyes glazed and wide, panting, and his whole slight form shaking, either with shock or fear or fury, perhaps all three—

"Near, put it down," L said calmly; he was shocked at seeing this from Near, but hid it well. Mello, yes; he supposed he'd even been half-expecting it. But Near…?

"Don't forget my promise?!" Near cried angrily, certainly not putting the gun down. "You forgot _your_ promise, L! You promised me, years ago, that you would never love anyone. We agreed that it was weakness. I know you're not a computer, that you are capable of feelings, but… but you died once already because of stupid feelings for your serial-killer boyfriend! Now you've been offered a chance to live again, to… to be _L_ again, and you're going to refuse it because you can't be with the person who killed you, who not even five minutes ago you said would drive you to madness if he inflicted any more pain on you?! What the hell is _wrong_ with you?!"

"Near—" L started, shielding Light from the shaking gun.

"Near, stop it," Mello said coolly, stepping behind the younger boy and easily taking the gun away. "Let him do what the hell he wants." He snapped the safety onto the gun and threw it behind him onto the altar. "It's his funeral."

Maybe it was because Mello understood love, because he'd loved Matt. Maybe not. Maybe he just wanted L and Light Yagami out of his sight forever.

Near said nothing, curling up on the steps of the altar, his mirror-mirror eyes once again betraying nothing of his emotions; Mello stood behind him and folded his arms.

This was beyond them now.

L was all but holding Light up now; the younger man's head resting on his shoulder, his breathing stumbled, interspersed with little gasps of pain, his left hand clutched to the gunshot wound, his right arm clinging around L's back. His hand and shirt were already soaked with blood, and he lifted his head to look up at L with a grimace that became a faint smile.

"You'll come with me?" He whispered. "You really will, L?"

"Of course, Light-kun."

"Good." Light lifted his bloody hand from his wound to embrace L fully. "D-don't… don't ever leave me… again."

"I won't."

Light rested his chin on L's shoulder, closing his one remaining eye, the bloody fingers of his left hand reaching up to grasp at L's ebony hair.

"I love you," he said again, his voice barely audible.

"I believe you," L replied softly. "For ever after."

And maybe because Light had finally accepted this, because he was no longer fighting against this world so eager to see Kira fail – this world rewritten already with an Unhappily Ever After waiting for him – it was decided that he was ready. Love came into no equation of any Shinigami bargain, it was true – it was a cause for punishment, and this only.

The floor broke beneath them; cracking from a central point beneath their feet as though suddenly struck, those cracks spreading outwards like spilt liquid until there was a web of dimensional rifts beneath their feet. The nerve-center collapsed inwards, bringing the ends of the loosened pieces of concrete up from the floor like precarious icebergs, ripping up and through the dark crimson carpet; with this, as though from beneath the church floor (_but no doubt from somewhere much deeper_), came a hissing breeze upwards, and with it the roaring sound of something volcanic, as though a breath of Nether-realm air, that dragged on them, pulling on their clothes and hair.

But they did not immediately fall to meet the roar that threatened to swallow them; L had unfurled his wings, clapped them down just as the cosmic boundaries broke, and now held both of them aloft, hanging tenuously above the gaping grasping abyss. He did not try to escape the yawning unknown opened up beneath him, simply hovering over it, but whether it was to gather his nerve, or look upon the world one last time, or to simply hold onto Light for a few extra seconds before surrendering to the reciprocity of the Universe, it was impossible to tell. They uttered not a sound, clinging to each other still above the tumultuous black hole tugging beneath their dangling feet.

Though Mello and Near hadn't moved through any of this, watching it as though from behind a sheet of glass, this scene of either condemnation or redemption untouchable to them – set in some fairyland that neither of them were, or ever had been, a part of – they were forced to shield their eyes when from the very heart of this spectacle of breaking floors and violent winds and crucible and calamity, blazed a sudden light. A flashing pulse of blue and white phosphorous threads, a glow whiter still than L's snow-white clothing, so bright and pure it hurt their eyes, spinning phantoms of double images. The colors flared so that all they saw before their vision was completely overexposed and blotted out was the last of them, Kira and the creature who had once been L, holding each other against whatever this judgment would cast at them as L finally closed his eyes and folded his wings, and allowed them both to fall. The roaring turned into a hum; a thrum rounding about through the air that grew louder and louder as the chorus swelled for the last note, so saturated with sound that the world would simply boil and burst…

And then there was silence.

They were gone.

Mello opened his aching eyes and looked around. The church was still, untouched – not even the motes of dust floating softly through the columns of dawn streaming in through the windows had been disturbed. The church was growing brighter moment by moment, illuminated by the ever-rising sun which had been the only stage-beam for this final scene. Where L and Light had been, now there was nothing – nothing at all, not even the cracks in the floor, as though it had been merely an illusion, like a flicker in the corner of one's eye, or the remnants of a dream immediately after waking.

They were gone; whether to Mu or Hell or somewhere worse.

They were gone – and there was silence.

Mello exhaled deeply, wearily, and slowly stooped to retrieve his gun. He shoved it into his belt and made his way down the altar steps, passing Near without a word.

A few paces from the altar, however, he slowed, and then stopped. He paused for a few seconds, as though considering the full impact of his decision before he turned back to Near, still silent. The younger boy, white as snow, was curled up with his head bowed. He was completely still, and there wasn't a sound coming from him, but as Mello watched, he saw another spatter hit the carpet of the last step, joining the few other darker spots there.

"Hey," Mello said abruptly, breaking the silence and trance the earth shattering moment had left upon them. Near jerked his head up, dark eyes shining wetly for the first time in his life. Mello thrust out his hand towards the younger boy, aggressively, awkwardly. "Come on, let's go."

Near wiped his face on his sleeve and accepted Mello's hand, letting him haul him to his feet non-too-gently. Mello snatched his hand back and turned again, starting away down the aisle. After a long moment, Near gathered up the two Death Notes and followed him.

"You know," Mello said as Near caught him up at the door of the church, "you're a lousy shot."

Near only smiled as Mello pushed open the church doors to the dawn.

* * *

Whew! Glad that's over! You know, a lot of people called us on the L-is-a-Shingami thing and the L-wants-Light's-heart thing. Heh heh… _So_ predictable…

I hope this chapter has cleared up a lot of stuff for people! Though, please, if you have any burning questions, or think we didn't explain something, or whatevs… Please voice your "concerns" in a review, or else put it on the forum we have on my profile, and we promise to address it. :)

Other miscellaneous news:

One: Dunno about you guys in the US, but here in the UK, the last few days of October saw the release of a Platinum Edition _Sleeping Beauty_ DVD. It's like they _knew_…

Two: On the subject of Disney princesses, I changed my poll a while back. I guess a lot of you have already voted, since there's been quite a high number of votes, but it's one asking which of the six "main" princesses is your favourite! At the moment Belle is wiping the floor with the others, although Aurora isn't doing too badly…

Three: On an unrelated note, as many of you have probably noticed, Beyond Birthday has finally been added to the FFNet character list! Took them long enough – I mean, people have been writing fics with him in for almost a year now… Speaking of, I wrote a little Halloween-themed fic about B and L, called _All Hallows_, which I'm going to post after this, so… yeah. You should read it. :)

Four: It actually snowed here in Birmingham on Tuesday. It really did. It was kind of freaky. I don't think I've ever seen snow in October before… O.o

Wow, yeah… I guess that's all. I really hope at least most of you enjoyed this chapter! I've been quite anxious since I finished it almost two weeks ago, wondering what people will make of it. Please, don't feel you have to say you liked it if you didn't! An honest response is always the most appreciated kind!

Everyone, have a wonderful Halloween, whatever you do! :) Tell us what costume you have! I have a Kikyo one this year, although I was prancing about as Sailor Mars again at a party on Tuesday…

Kyah! I'm so excited! Happy Halloween, everyone (and Happy Birthday to L)!!!!1111!!!11! Catch us next time for the LAST EVAR CHAPTER of _Poison Apple_!

RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx


	31. Finale: Ashes to Apples

**Narroch: **My my my, how time has flown. It seems it was only a few weeks ago that I was visiting in the U.K., staying up late drawing comics with RR when she passes me this innocent little envelope full of notes and ideas for this crazy epic fanfic, which at the time, didn't even have a title yet. It was the innocuous start to something big.

**RR:** But _finally_… Last. Chapter. Gah!

But let's be cheerful as opposed to mopey! Hope everyone had a great Halloween, whatever you did! I went to three Halloween events last week, once as Sailor Mars and twice as _Inu Yasha_'s Kikyo, the biggest being the massive Halloween party on Saturday at Birmingham's Carling Academy. OMG, the _costumes_! There were some truly great ones, including a milk carton, a Rubik's Cube, a tampon and the gingerbread man from _Shrek_. Also saw plenty of cool duplicates: No less than seven Jokers of the Heath Ledger variety, three Freddy Kruegers, four Sweeney Todds, a complete quartet of Ghostbusters, two Captain Jack Sparrows (so much Johnny Depp!) and a whole crop of superheroes. Oh, and there was a girl dressed as Misa who I ran into about four times – we had a bit of a fangirly squeal since I had my _Death Note_ bag with me… :) From what I saw, though, she and I were the only two people there dressed as anime characters. Thanks to everyone who shared their costume on their review! Hope you all had a great time – our update aside. Heh heh heh…

But moving on! Today is 5th November, and we're updating today because it is, unfortunately for L, the anniversary of his death. Incidentally, as many of you probably know, 5th November is also Guy Fawkes/Bonfire Night here in Britain. I've been hearing fireworks since Saturday and no doubt I'll go on hearing them until _next_ Saturday… I'm actually late posting this partly due to me being at fireworks display (and partly due to Narroch's failage). BUT still, I guess it's a little ironic for the last chapter to be posted on this day – it wasn't deliberate when we started posting last year, honest!

So… yeah. Last chapter. A lot of you still had questions, and I have to say that in fact some of them probably won't be answered, but… still, we hope you enjoy the final offering of _Poison Apple_. It's been a long time in the making. BTW, if you would like to see our scrawly renditions of L as a Shinigami, take a peek at our DeviantART sometime soon, since we'll be posting up some sketches and even my original (questionable) designs for his outfit.

Thankyou to (for the last time): **sayuri2023, recipe for insanity, Mayumi Nakashima, Jungle John, Lostphaorah, isamu-michi, Layalas, Hellishlygood, Riin, ?, Vermillion Lies, blondevil, Scripta Lexicona, xXxIchigoBeyondxXx, Tanka, Synonymous Brian, Star Jinin, The Sacred Pandapuff, badwolf.5, narutoaclaymorelove4eva, threehoursofsleep, PikaNecoMico, Anna P.T, kitsunechibiko, xxxyuniexxx, BakayaroManiac, MagicMind, fantasies4eva, kawaiinami, Opacus, BriFMAluver, PaintedTurtleShell, Deus3xMachina, zeppelin13, FacelessIdol, Nardaviel, ayachan, KiraXsama, Shadowsole, TheOneWhoSitsWithTheTurtles, birthname, bookenworum, Lawliet's Angel, AnotherLiar, shutupandsing, nextbigthing12, TheQueenofMediocrity, -Red Angel-Blue Angel-, Celeste Goodchild, UniqueIndividualism, Olynara Sedai, PedoBear, Kaiji, fallenangelwings, L Ninja, Cobalt Black, Alba, Gabi Howard, 4udball, Strange and Intoxicating –rsa, Kutsushita-Socks, tsuki aoi usagi, bluepup888, Mayura-Hikari-090, Beautifully-Tragically Love, rain angst, daxterandboxer, gyrfalcon122, shad0wform, Li the Twilight Knight, Anna, CuteCherryBlossom, kitoriwitch613, AshesOverDiamond, Jexynn, aaattttackkkkk, sssjRaina **and **Robocracy**!

It's crunch-time, ladies and gentlemen. :)

Finale: Ashes to Apples

It was not noticeably warmer – indeed, still bleakly, bitterly cold – but the snow had all but melted. Gone was the pure-white fairyland of soft, silent snow, and in its place only the final remains of it; the crunch of iced rime coating the streets, while grey, near-black, icy sludge gathered in the dips of drains, building up into mounds of filth. It was late December, after Christmas, and all of Tokyo had gone back to work, albeit grudgingly.

The Dead were unaffected by the changes in the weather, however slight, by the grey sky, by the post-Christmas depression of the city. Still they slept, for one hundred years and longer still. Standing before their graves was balm for the wounded heart, to ease the pain of loss for those left behind.

The Dearly Departed slept on, unknowing or uncaring, or both.

Matt had been buried in the same grave as L. The fact of the matter was that the Japanese police had dug up L's grave and hauled his coffin from the ground, only to find it empty. Reaching no conclusion on the matter, they had simply put the empty coffin back, more out of a respect for the dead man as opposed to a belief that he might return to it, should he feel like it. Matt's coffin had been placed in on top of it, the priest had spoken a few more psalms, for the Eternal Peace of those who rested, and should have rested, within those narrow wooden boxes, and then the earth had been thrown over them again, to seal them up until the next time the Japanese police saw fit to go looking for the Dead Man Walking.

Mello and Near had stood at the graveside then, they alone in terms of people who had either known or loved those within the narrow wooden boxes; just as they stood here now, in coats and scarves and silence. The graveyard of that little church in which they'd found themselves confronted with a truth already written, long before they'd set foot onto L's chessboard, was empty but for them.

Their plane back to England left that afternoon.

"We could have had him brought back to Britain," Near said expressionlessly. "Had him buried in Winchester."

Mello shook his head, brushing back some of his gold hair as he finished straightening out the roses, red as apples, they'd brought to lie at the root of that plain, nameless cross.

"I think this is what he'd have wanted," he replied quietly, straightening again. "He died here, in Japan, trying to stop Kira. In a way… he belongs here now. Like L. _With_ L."

"Mello, L isn't in that grave. We both know that." Near's glassy eyes glinted as Mello briefly met his gaze. "And I don't think he's coming back to it, either."

Mello shrugged, pulling up his hood.

"Wish that Yagami bastard had died properly so that _he_ had a grave," he muttered. "So I could freaking _spit_ on it…"

"It's better this way. Let's face it… it probably would have been leaked to the media eventually that he was, or had been, Kira." Near gave a shrug of his own. "You'd just have had idiot Kira worshippers holding candlelit midnight vigils around it."

Mello gave a twisted half-smile.

"Ironic, isn't it?" He gestured vaguely around the churchyard; implying it to be taken as a motif of death itself. "He makes a name for himself by killing those who thinks are unworthy – that name is "Kira", the Japanese pronunciation of "killer". He is, essentially, a glorified mass-murderer. Death is his domain. And then… he doesn't die himself. At least not properly. There's no grave for me to spit on, or for his idiot followers to preach around, or whatever." He gave a hiss. "_Bastard_."

"You could say the same about L. In a lot of ways, I think he was as much to blame for all this."

Mello gave a snort.

"I'm glad he's gone," he spat. "I'm glad he went to Hell with his psycho wackjob murderer boyfriend. They deserve each other."

"You don't forgive him." It wasn't a question on Near's part.

"I can't."

Near shrugged his slight shoulders again.

"I don't forgive him either. Still, I don't think it's due to any particularly profound reasoning. You and I have simply been late in realizing something that should have been – and _was_ – obvious all along."

"Like what?"

"He was human." Near's mirror-mirror eyes gleamed. "And humans do some pretty awful things."

"He was a complete bastard, Near."

"I agree." Near's mouth twitched into a dry smile.

At this, Mello turned his attention back to the gravestone that had once been L's, but now served as Matt's, and Matt's only. He laid a hand against the topmost spike of the stone cross, completely quiet, as though thinking deeply, or perhaps only remembering.

"What do you think happened to them?" Mello asked quietly, fingers rolling the loops of his rosary without acknowledging it. Near watched him for a moment, the careful way his fingers manipulated the beads, the complete and faraway dryness of his eyes.

"L spoke of an altered timeline," he said, his own answer carefully-constructed. "Perhaps they went back to their original period."

"But if that is the 'original' reality, then what does that make us? If that bastard's judgment was the only reason for the existence of this time… Are we just leftovers of a Shinigami's experimental judgment?" Mello's fingers clenched around the beads. "I don't believe that."

"It is a disquieting thought; that the life of one criminal could warrant the creation of an entire world for the sole purpose of judging him. No, I agree with you. It is not possible, even for Shinigami."

Mello left off touching his rosary, perhaps suddenly realizing that he had been fingering it the entire time. He dipped his hands into his pockets, letting the heavy silence contemplate another option.

"Since his time here was meant as a judgment that means he probably went to Hell."

"That assumption is entirely dependent on an unfounded religious belief. If we are thinking of his fate through that lens, then we also have to consider what all religions say about the afterlife. He has just as much chance being trapped in the karmic cycle of Samsara as he does being sent to the fiery pits of Hell – depending on the beliefs of the person asking. There is no way we can prove or disprove either idea."

Mello kicked at a hunk of ice, still lingering on the image of Kira in flames before sighing in response.

"Yeah…" he agreed moodily. "And if he was going to Hell, he would have just gone straight there after his original death. There was no reason to drag him back to life if they were just going to toss him back into the same place."

"They…" Near repeated, "The Shinigamis. Perhaps Light and L are in that realm now. It was the murder of a Shinigami that started this entire ordeal, and L himself was already half-Shinigami. It would make sense for them to go there since that seems to be the place that is pulling all the strings."

"I don't care where they end up, as long as they're out of this world," Mello muttered with a huff. He was tired of contemplating the fate of murderers and traitors, ironically bound that way by love. It made him sick.

"Yes. I suppose it doesn't really matter. There is nothing that we could do about it at this point anyway. But regardless of where they went, be it Heaven, Hell, or nothingness, they went there _together_."

Mello's hands fisted in his pockets, something about the words making him go rigid.

"Together…" He mumbled flatly, staring at the blank cross, his face muted and his eyes dry.

"As you said, he and Yagami deserve each other."

Mello snapped out of his trance, and turned to stare at Near, and it was only after a long moment in which the younger boy held his eyes and the tiniest ghost of a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth, that Mello realized what it was he was trying to convey. It was his own strange roundabout way of comforting him. He sighed with a rueful smile before turning to face Near fully.

"I guess you'll be L now, then," he said finally.

"You have as much right to be L as I, Mello."

Mello smirked narrowly.

"While we both know that's complete bullshit, I have to say that even if it wasn't… I don't want to be L."

Near arched an eyebrow.

"Truthfully," he replied, "neither do I."

"So who's next in line after us?"

"I have no idea. Still, I don't think that will be a concern. "L" is only a title. There's no reason why we can't just be M and N."

Mello smiled icily.

"…Partner up, you mean? You and me, Near?"

"If only for a little while, yes. I feel that we should keep our promise to him. To the real L."

"I don't think we owe him any such promise," Mello bit out.

"Mello, I know that you're angry about Matt's death and the part that L played in it, but… this isn't about Matt. It isn't about L, or Yagami, or us. The fact is that if we don't find and destroy those notebooks, then "Kiras" are just going to keep popping up all over the world. It'll be an endless cycle. While it's unlikely that any individual will take it quite as far as Yagami did, you have to consider the possibility that one could fall into the hands of one, or a group, of Kira worshippers. Who needs a grave to preach around when you can carry on the work of your "God"? And even if that doesn't happen, you have to consider vengeance, greed or simple human curiosity." Near looked at Mello levelly across the grave. "People will use Death Notes, Mello. It's not speculation. It's fact." His voice softened. "…That's why he felt he could ask us to do this, even after everything he'd done. It's an impersonal matter – a matter of humanity as opposed to individualism. Death Notes specifically kill humans, so of course humans will use them. We thrive on destroying each other."

Mello gave no answer to this, verbal or otherwise. His hand still rested on the icy contours of the stone cross, and he remained quiet for a very long time. Near said nothing else either – voiceless, perhaps burned out of words, of reasons to defend L's request of them.

Finally Mello reached into one of the large, deep pockets of his coat and pulled something out; they glinted in the dull, frosty glow of the day.

"I wonder… how it was that L even came back," he muttered, looking down at the goggles. "Not all the Shinigami garbage he was spouting. I just mean… in general. How does a person who has been dead for three years come back to life?"

"If you mean… to wish that Matt—"

"No." Mello gripped the goggles tighter still. "I wouldn't wish that on him. If nothing else, I… I can only say that L didn't seem all that happy. Coming back from death hurt him, and changed him for the worse." He gave a quick little sigh. "Matt's at rest now. I hope he's never disturbed the way L was."

He took another look at the grave, holding the goggles in one hand, as though he was maybe debating hanging them over the cross. In the end, however, he changed his mind, and put them back into his pocket; before sharply turning away and starting back towards the gravel path of the graveyard.

Near paused a moment longer; and found, on turning to follow the older boy, something sailing towards him. He caught it clumsily, only just closing his small fingers around it. He opened his hands to see what Mello had thrown at him – seeing the tiny cross of the rosary stark against his white palms. The black onyx beads swung lazily to and fro, hanging down over the edge of his hand where he hadn't caught the rest.

Near glanced up; Mello hadn't looked back at him, and didn't appear to be waiting for him.

Again.

* * *

_March, 2008_

"I'm ready when you are," Mello said sharply; his voice suddenly cutting through the quiet.

Near looked up from the floor at the blonde boy; he was sprawled on the couch, idly flipping through one of the four Death Notes that had been neatly piled on one of the seat cushions, in contrast to Near, who was lying on his stomach on the carpet, surrounded by a small plastic army of various dolls and figures, in addition to a number of dice, chess pieces, a pack of playing cards and a book.

"I'm hesitant, I admit," Near replied, going back to his silent game.

"This was _your_ idea." Mello's dark eyes glittered dangerously. "Don't tell me you're hesitant due to the lure of their power, Near. You know that's exactly what happened to that damned Yagami bastard, and look where it got him."

"It's not that," Near replied quietly. "I was reading the rules in the original notebook, the one with the writing on the front. When we destroy those notebooks, we'll lose our memory of them completely."

"I'm aware of that. I've already written out a full report of the conclusion we came to on the Kira case – including extensive details on the Death Notes."

"I know, I've read it, and I've taken notes of my own. But…" Near gave a quiet sigh. "It just… that one factor that makes me hesitant in destroying them. Notes and case-files are all well and good, but you have to consider, Mello, that once the notebooks are destroyed, it'll be like reading fiction." Near began to carefully dissect one of his robot action figures. "That said, as far as the Death Notes themselves go, I think I'd feel better if they _were_ destroyed. Our promise to L that we'd get rid of them aside, they don't belong in the human world. No good can, or _has_, come of their presence here. I'd considered keeping one of them – even just a _page_ of one – so that we wouldn't lose our memories, but it makes me uneasy still."

"I think L wanted us to forget them," Mello replied. "That was half of the reason why he really asked us to gather them all up." He fished into his pocket and pulled out a half-eaten bar of chocolate; giving a small snort as he unwrapped it. "I guess he presumed it wouldn't take us too long to find them all. How long did it take us to zone in on that idiot who started using the fourth one not even a week after we got back to Winchester? A month?"

"Three weeks and two days." Near shrugged, growing bored of pulling his figure apart and reaching for his playing cards. "Granted, he wasn't anywhere close to being as smart as Yagami."

Mello gave a dry smirk, snapping off a square of chocolate with his white teeth.

"What do you know? We actually work quite well together."

Near gave an absent nod, spreading out his cards face down in a large, long fan. Mello didn't question what he was doing, long used to Near's peculiar behavior, simply observing in silence as he ran his pale fingers along the arc of cards, pausing at one and slipping it out.

"Ace of spades," Mello observed as he watched Near turn it over. "You know that people call that the "death card"? Some symbolic crap…"

Near gave another slight, vague nod.

"Alright," Near said, glancing again at the other boy. "Let's get rid of them."

"Okay, we'll fucking burn them." Mello stood, stretching his long legs, and bit at his chocolate again as he threw the Death Note he'd been holding back onto the sofa. "I'll go start a fire. Think we can just do it in this grate over here?"

"I don't see why not."

"Good. You get the notebooks and bring them over."

Near gathered up his cards again into a neat pile and got up, putting them loose into his pocket. He shuffled over to the couch, in no particular hurry, to retrieve the Death Notes.

If he was shocked to see Ryuk looming over the couch, he didn't show it. In fact, he didn't say a word; only pausing, looking up at the Shinigami with his black mirror-like eyes, almost daring him to take one, to go out into the human world and start this sick little game all over again…

Ryuk said nothing too, just grinning – leering – at Near.

"Near, hurry the fuck up!" Mello snapped across the room. "I'm going to end up setting myself alight in a minute…"

Mello seemed not to have even acknowledged Ryuk's presence – maybe he hadn't noticed him, even when he'd been on the sofa. Either way, he certainly wasn't paying attention to him right now. Still holding the ungodly creature's yellow gaze, Near stepped forward and picked up all four Death Notes, carefully, one by one, and then stepped back again, holding them to his chest, pressed against the rosary that hung there, threaded under the white collar of his loose pajama shirt.

Still the Shinigami only grinned, and made no attempt to reclaim any of the notebooks that he, as a god of death, had more of an ownership right to than Near, Mello, or even Light Yagami. He didn't seem to care.

Near looked one last time at him before turning his back on him, bringing the notebooks over towards Mello. He'd managed to start a rather pitiful fire in the old grate, more smoke than flames, and he scowled as Near approached with a rather unimpressed look on his face.

"The notebook paper will get it going," he spat in reply to the silent criticism, snatching one of the Death Notes from the younger boy. "Watch." He threw it in unceremoniously, and at once, true to his word, the dry paper curled and browned as the fire sparked and burned larger and brighter, engulfing the slim, black-covered notebook.

"Here." Near handed Mello the rest of the Death Notes and walked away again, back towards his pile of belongings scattered on the carpet; Ryuk was still watching their every move, alternating between Mello and Near himself, but the boy ignored him as he picked up the book he'd left there and went back to the fire again.

"What's that?" Mello asked, glancing down at the book clutched in Near's hands as he threw the last of the Death Notes – the original one, with the words 'Death Note' scrawled on the front – into the fire.

"Just a book," Near replied, and he threw it into the flames too, on top of the first and last Death Note.

_Legends of Popular Greek Mythology_, Mello was able to read through the flames already ravaging the pages of the volume. He glanced at Near, who said nothing; and so he said nothing too.

They simply stood side by side – the remaining two of the original four reflections surrounding Kira, all those years ago – and watched the fire destroy Kira's origin and cleanse the world of its duplicates. One with hair of sunshine gold and one with hair white as snow, held together by the letter that, alphabetically, came one place and two before their own; the rising flames reflected, glinting, on the glossy, blank surfaces of the goggles threaded carefully around Mello's neck, resting comfortably at his collarbone—

And in the black-as-ebony mirror-mirror eyes of Near.

They'd had to destroy them because humans weren't smart enough to learn from their mistakes, no matter how many times they made them; and if there were examples of that lesson itself, their names were Light Yagami and L Lawliet.

As the last scrap of the last Death Note crumbled to black ash, Near looked over his shoulder – across the room, to a blank, empty place behind the couch.

"What's the matter?" Mello asked, shooting a cool look at him.

Near looked at that spot for a while longer; then turned his attention back to the flames.

"Nothing," he replied.

* * *

Ryuk would never understand humans.

He was still skulking in the dark, silent room; now unseen, not that it mattered. He would have to return to the Shinigami Realm soon. The two young men – boys, really, not much more than children, with the white-haired one only seventeen – had left the room hours ago, taking their names and lifespans with them.

In the grate lay the dead, grey ashes of four Death Notes, an old 1951 Oxford University Press edition of _Legends of Popular Greek Mythology_ and its crimson sweet wrapper bookmark, and the end to a bloody fairytale years in the writing. Mihael Keehl (who, Ryuk knew, had been revived by the half-human wretch of a Shinigami, used as a puppet by the Shinigami Realm to fulfill their vengeance – Ryuk had been able to see him for what he was all along, although Light had never known quite what he had been laughing at) and Nate River had left their memories of the notebooks and their ability to see Ryuk himself with those ashes, too.

They'd never been a part of the original fairytale, after all; so it was easy for them to rinse their hands of it.

Ryuk, though… Ryuk had. He was the original author; a wicked, twisted variant of a fairy godmother, who bestowed upon the lovely prince the means by which he would eventually destroy himself. It had been his greatest gift and his greatest curse – more so than even his unspeakable beauty.

And then there'd been the detective, with hair black as ebony and skin white as snow, and with eyes like magic mirrors, to show the prince that beneath his beauty there was an ugliness which, until that moment, he hadn't believed existed.

The detective, L Lawliet, whom Light had loved so much, he'd killed him four times over.

Ryuk had found this particular fairytale interesting, thus; since it _had_, ultimately, been real, and therefore, from the point of view of a creature removed from humanity so as to be unaffected by its idiocy, had been hugely entertaining, just as fairy stories are meant to be.

Villainy, romance, death, blood, tragedy. It was a perfect fairytale. It was all there.

In the end, Ryuk hadn't neglected to give a disclaimer. He'd told Light, years ago, that humans in possession of Death Notes were cursed by unhappiness – but still the boy had insisted on writing and rewriting the tale, chasing a Happy Ever After forever out of his reach.

It had amused Ryuk to see him struggle, either way.

He sank his serrated teeth into his last apple, ripping a chunk of crimson flesh out of it with a satisfactory _crunch_. It wasn't that Light had ever bored him, but he was glad he didn't have to follow him anymore, since wherever Light was now, there certainly weren't any apples.

But for the poisoned one he'd taken with him.

* * *

**Narroch: **There may be some of you wondering what exactly happened to L and Light. We've tried to keep this idea open to audience interpretation - not as a cop out, but as more of an integration; the characters don't know what really happened, not one hundred percent, so they guess and throw theories at it. And that's really as enlightened as we can get. After all – even we as the authors don't know where they went exactly, in the same way that ordinary people never know with absolute certainty what happens to anyone after death. It is a matter of personal beliefs. And while we _could_ attempt to create a literary world for L and Light to inhabit together for the rest of eternity, by doing that we would really be cheapening the ineffable cosmic phenomenon that is DEATH.

It does not really matter _where_ they went, what is more important is that they went _together_, which is something that is normally impossible. Death, or passing on, or whatever you wish to think of it as, is a solitary journey into the unknown. The fact that they were able to cling to each other as they fell into the abyss is a much more powerful statement than any description we could hope to give of where they ended up.

**RR: **But if you still need your L n' Light-o fix, however, we have an epilogue for you. See you at the finish line, folks.


	32. Epilogue

Epilogue

(You're stronger than me," Mello said, his voice somehow both bitter and nonchalant all at once.

"No," was Near's calm reply. "It's simply that I have never loved.")

* * *

"_It's snowing, Light-kun."_

"_I can see that. Stop moving your head."_

"_That hurts, Light-kun."_

"_If you'd comb your hair properly, there wouldn't be so many knots in it."_

_L glanced away from the dark window and up at Light via their reflection in the mirror above the desk in their bedroom; before which L himself was sat in the chair, forced out of his usual position by Light, who stood behind him meticulously dragging a red comb through his black-as-ebony hair._

_It was late; the room dark, lit only by the bedside lamp, the ghostly glow of the laptop on the sheets, and the icy illumination of the city lights glinting on the snow as it silently fell, gathering like a layer of frosting on the windowsill outside. The chain, partly coiled on the floor, gleamed too, as though every link held a secret within its metal loop._

"_Why is this… necessary?" L winced as Light impatiently disentangled a knot._

"_Because your hair is a mess, Ryuzaki."_

"_That's none of Light-kun's business."_

"_My fingers keep getting caught in it."_

"_Don't touch it, then."_

"_Maybe I like touching it." Light gave an impatient sigh. "Besides, it's not good for your hair to be all knotted like this…"_

"_It's also not good to douse it in chemically-enhanced hair products."_

"_Shut up. I'm nearly done." Light tapped him on the skull with the comb. "You're like a little kid sometimes…"_

"_Too bad that Light-kun is stuck with me," L said complacently, jingling the chain. He turned his attention back to the apple Light had given him – maybe as a token of love, or maybe just to pacify him while he attacked his hair._

_Or maybe to signify something else (that his time as fairest in the land was coming to its end)._

_Maybe because L could see the glint of the spinning wheel's needle in Light's eyes; just as Light could see Kira in the mirrors of L's._

"_Do you think Gods of Death really love apples all that much, Light-kun?" L asked after another moment's silence; he hadn't bitten into it, simply turning it this way and that, carefully examining the shape bitten into the flesh – stark white, like snow – which Light had left._

_Light paused, the crimson comb stopping too; he raised his eyes, meeting L's gaze in the mirror again._

"_I don't know, Ryuzaki. Do they have red hands?"_

"_I don't think so."_

"_Maybe from blood."_

"_Maybe."_

_Light gave a shrug in reply and finished pulling the comb through L's hair; laying it aside and then running his fingers through it, following the straight locks in the shape they fell around L's white-as-snow face._

"_That looks much better, don't you think?" He asked, pleased with his handiwork._

"_If you say so, Light-kun."_

"_Hey, be more grateful! It wasn't easy to untangle all the knots caused by your neglect!"_

"_Thankyou, Light-kun."_

"_You have lovely hair, Ryuzaki. When it's combed, I mean."_

_L glanced up at him emotionlessly._

"_Flattery now?"_

_Light gave a snort of disgust._

"_I don't know why I bother," he bit out. "It'll probably just go to Hell again the next time you step out of the shower."_

"_That is very likely."_

_Light gave a tired little sigh and leaned over the back of the chair, resting his head on his folded arms._

"_Still," he said quietly, his gaze on the full picture of them in the mirror, "you're beautiful, Ryuzaki."_

_L smiled dryly in response._

"_Light-kun says such silly things," he said airily._

_Light bit at his lip, then resigned to coming around the chair, lowering himself to the detective's level._

"_Why is it alright for you to say that I'm beautiful, yet when I return the favor—?"_

"_It's called Double Standards." L smirked. "Surely you're used to it by now."_

"_You're terrible."_

"_Aren't we both?"_

_Light opened his mouth; but could voice no reply, and eventually looked away. With his attention averted, L deftly slid the chain around his throat, the links gleaming in the silver glow of the room. Light's gaze snapped back to him as the cold metal settled about his neck like a choker._

_For a moment there was silence between them again, their eyes interlocked tighter than their wrists._

"_Do you hate me?" L whispered, speaking first._

"_You know I don't."_

"_You'd see me dead."_

"_Don't say terrible things like that."_

_L smiled._

"_We'll see."_

_Light kissed him; jerking upwards against the chain, fierce and passionate, almost-biting._

"_I don't hate you," he breathed, drawing back just a little. "You see? I love you, Ryuzaki."_

"_That proves nothing."_

"_How can I prove my love to you, then?"_

"_You don't have to prove anything to me. The truth always makes itself apparent in the end."_

"_You're such a bastard."_

"_Mirror mirror, Light-kun," L sighed._

"_But…" Light looked at him, unblinking, forcing himself to face those mirror-mirror eyes themselves. "…I'll always love you."_

"_As I said," L replied, quieter yet, and still smiling. "…Mirror mirror." _

_And he bit into the apple._

(—But a hundred years to a steadfast heart are but a day.)

**END**

* * *

**RR:** And they didn't live happily ever after – just as we promised they wouldn't.

Wow. We're done. I can't believe it. I think I'm in shock. O.o What a year-and-a-month it's been! I just want to say **THANKYOU** to everyone who has read and/or reviewed, simply read, even given our little fic the time of day… It means so much to us, it really, really does. It's silly to say this as a "writer", but sometimes words aren't enough, and it sure feels that way now – that me simply saying **THANKYOU** in huge bold capitals doesn't express my gratitude to each and every one of you enough… All your kind words, and your criticism when it was needed, and simply reading your reactions to some of our wackier twists… It's too much! Look how many reviews we have! At the time I post this we have **1785**. I mean, that's just crazy…

Not that I want to show favouritism, but I do have some particular thanksyous:

**Worren **for making the Lesser-Spotted _Poison Apple_ Banner, currently being paraded on our LJ.

**RileyKitsune **and **Byakko Ta **(Pepp) for their wonderful AMVs (links on my profile)!

**BakayaroManiac, UnsolvedE****nigma,** **Macvanaly** (aka Nilahxapiel – sorry, I had to out you, ha ha)**, Horus-Goddess, Kazutaka-kun, Matt-KiraKiller, Lex6, CobaltBlack, ScientificRomance, Midnight-Lily, DarkChocolateDreamer, Sevigne, MysticInca, Beani-ke, Celluloid-Dreamer, SadisticLolita13, FabulousFabulous** and **yourmomlemon** for their brilliant fan-art for the fic! Other people have said they're going to do some too, so thankyou in advance – sorry I can't put your name here, but I'm not that brilliant, heh heh… Again, the "master" link to our DA, where all the art can be found on the journal, is on my profile.

**claireoujisama** for her very elaborate _Poison Apple_ fan-soundtrack over on LiveJournal!

And… wow, I feel bad about this, but some people wrote some poetry and someone even wrote song lyrics. I didn't keep very good track of those, but you guys know who you are, so thankyou very much! Glad we could inspire you!

And to all of you, as before, for reading, reviewing and keeping this fic alive! Yes, we could have written it still even if no-one had been reading it, but feedback is, I believe, invaluable and, above all, very much appreciated.

**Narroch: **I must say, I am relieved it is over. Despite the _Poison Apple_ shaped hole in my life now, I feel like this story has run its course and I can put it away satisfied with what we have done. I have no regrets with writing it, and the experience has only enriched my life with new discussions, ideas, and many new friends.

**RR:** Some random trivia about the epilogue before we wrap up: The idea of Light combing L's hair comes from the original Brother's Grimm _Snow White_ fairytale, in which the Wicked Queen, before attempting to kill Snow White with the poisoned apple, tries combing her hair with a poisoned comb. And the final bracketed quote? Have a chocolate-coated cupcake if you recognized it as one of Maleficent's. :)

**Narroch: **If there are any questions, or if we totally missed something, or anything, please let us know! You people and your continued support of this humble project mean so much to us, we are overwhelmed by your presence! Thank you so much to everyone who has ever read, or reviewed, _Poison Apple_, and a very special thanks goes to the people who offered us advice and criticism. This story would not be what it is today without all of you. And this may be a bit redundant, but I would like to thank RobinRocks herself for coming up with this story and wanting to share the experience of writing it with me. I can't overstate my gratitude for being involved with this project, and all of you lovely people.

**RR:** (And thankyou too, Narroch – it was nice yelling at you over updates. No, really, she was great.)

Gah. We really have come such a long way since that time I stood in the Space Mountain queue in Disneyland Paris, Summer 2007, and thought it might be fun to cram a God-complexed mass murderer, a zombie-emulating sugar-junkie and a couple of Disney fairytale princesses into one fanfiction. I think it's been worth it – and I hope you all think so too, even if this final update didn't give you the answers that you wanted.

Each and every one of you, once again, thankyou for reading _Poison Apple_. Really. :)

(And thanks for humoring me and voting on all my crazy polls. There's a new one, just for kicks. Heh heh…)

Just remember: Stay away from spinning wheels, don't take apples from strange old ladies and don't be Kira, and you'll live happily ever after.

More or less.

RobinRocks and Narroch

xXx

P.S: A little shameless plugging: Narroch and I plan on writing a few other bits and pieces together, and I'm always spewing out something or other, so… yeah, stick around for more of our fanfic shenanigans! :)


	33. Special: Grimmer Than Grimm

**RobinRocks: **…

Surprised to see us? Ka ka ka. :)

Yes, _Poison Apple_ is over. That is, the actual story _Poison Apple_ is over. What you are now looking at… is a super-sparkly-special "retelling" of the fic… as a fairytale.

**Narroch: **Ahahaha! We are so tricky! Well, we just couldn't let it go without one final fanfare... So here we are, back at the source. Inspiration for this fic came from many places, Disney being the most obvious. But where did Disney first start? Why, fairytales of course.

**RR: **SO… Yeah. This is essentially the entire three acts of _Poison Apple_ crammed and condensed into under 10,000 words, with a few fairies, princes and spinning wheels tossed in for good measure. The reason for this…?

Well, there are kind of three reasons. ONE: As a thankyou to everyone for supporting _Poison Apple_ during its run! **1930** reviews?! TWO: As something fun for Christmas. I dunno, fairytales _do_ seem kind of Christmassy, maybe because so many of them are set in snow-covered European countries… THREE: I had always been planning to write this anyway, whenever we finished _PA_. This "fairytale" is, more or less, the faux-fairytale that L alludes to, calling his favourite, in _Poison Apple_ itself.

This "retelling" borrows, like _Poison Apple_ itself, heavily from mostly _Snow White_ and _Sleeping Beauty_, but you'll also see little bits and pieces here and there from _Beauty and the Beast_, _Cinderella_, a little _Rapunzel_ and Hans Christian Anderson's _The Snow Queen_. Oh, and I used this as an excuse to read lots and lots of Brothers Grimm. Some of them are _weird_ – and aside from the expected princes, princesses and dwarves, there is also a surprising amount of tales featuring ravens, tailors and guys called Hans. O.o

**Narroch: **So this entire chapter is written in the Grimm style, which is interesting to say the least. We hope you all like it, even if it is very different. Have a very merry Christmas, and happy holidays!

**RR: **Yup, consider this a Christmas present. Aren't we just _delightful_? :D

Poison Apple: Grimmer Than Grimm

Once upon a time, when things were simpler (perhaps more than they should have been), and yet somehow still more fantastical, shaped by magic mirrors and wicked spells, there was born a prince; and, at his birth, the beauty and perfection of this child was remarked upon, revelled in, celebrated.

The king and queen named the baby Light and ordered that there be a great celebration held to proclaim the news of the birth of the new prince all throughout the kingdom. Everyone in the entire kingdom came to the festivity to see the baby – the most glorious of these guests being three good fairies, who blessed the little prince with the gifts of beauty, intelligence and kindness.

These were not, however, the only gifts to be bestowed upon the child that day.

As the last glimmers of the final fairy's gift vanished, the room grew cold and dark, and whispers of fear swept throughout the crowd; gentry and peasantry alike huddled together as the damp, chilling scent of earth pervaded the air—

It smelt like death.

Which was what now presented itself before them. More or less.

A tall gangling creature, the length of its limbs almost grotesque, its face pale and gaunt, the skin stretched over sharp bones in some places and sunken in others. People shrank at the sight of the wild plumage jutting from its collarbone, like oily ravens' feathers, and at the bulging yellow eyes and the needle-like teeth framed by the wide black lips arranged into an amused, leering grin.

The word "Shinigami" passed through the crowd several times, following the movement of the creature up towards the cradle in which the tiny prince lay sleeping.

"Halt!" cried a knight, suddenly stepping between the beast and cradle. "What business have you here, creature of death?"

The Shinigami gave a grating little laugh.

"No need to be so alarmed," he replied with a grin wider still. "I heard all you humans making such a fuss about this baby, so I came to see it for myself."

"This celebration was to be attended by all the members of my kingdom," said the king coldly. "And that you are clearly not… Death God."

The Shinigami gave a shrug.

"I was bored. Besides, whatever you may think… We Shinigami are not evil. We just do our job."

This revelation did not seem to make anyone warm up to the creature any more, but he didn't seem remotely fazed; instead he stepped through the knight as easily as a shadow, at which a great many people gasped in horror and thus recoiled further, and went right over to the cradle to see the baby.

"Get away from my child, unholy demon!" the king shouted, at once taking up his sword.

"I wish to also give the prince a gift," said the Shinigami.

"My son should have no need for any gift you could give," the king snapped in reply.

"You base that opinion only on my appearance." The Shinigami grinned. "That's a very dangerous thing to do – judging people by the way they look."

"You are not a _person_," the king said coldly.

"No," agreed the creature. "I am a Shinigami – and so I give a Shinigami's gift to the prince." He raised his claw-like fingers above the cradle, his eyes gleaming. "Hear my words – the gift I give is the gift of death. That is, the ability to strike down whoever the prince sees fit. It is the borrowed power of a God – a _Death_ God, that is."

At this proclamation, a cold unnatural wind swept through the chamber, extinguishing most of the torches. In the shadows, everyone could see black wings spread themselves from the peak of the creature's spiny back, and he flew away up through the ceiling, cackling gleefully as the queen took up her child and clutched him tightly to her.

The king simply lowered his sword and gazed sadly at the tiny baby – his own son – already cursed with being condemned as a murderer.

* * *

Years passed and the little prince grew; he was clever, beautiful and very kind, as the charms the three good fairies had placed on him at his birth protected and enhanced these virtues. At the age of seven he was betrothed to a princess with hair of sunshine gold and lips red as a rose, and it was agreed that they would marry upon reaching adulthood. He was very happy and beloved by all who knew him.

He did not know, of course, of the power which had been given to him by the Shinigami before he could remember. Since all who had been present saw the gift as a curse, did not know how the creature had meant for the prince to use the power, it was decided best that he not know of it at all and the king decreed that it never be spoken of again.

As happy as life was for the prince, however, the same could not be said for everybody within his father's kingdom; there was often disease, famine and crime rife to ravage the peasantry, and upon one such occasion, which happened to be the day of the prince's sixteenth birthday, a gang of thieves and bandits attacked the marketplace, stealing goods and money and both injuring and killing a great many innocent men, women and children. This terrible incident came as a great shock to the kingdom and the king ordered that the villains be rounded up to be brought before him for punishment. However, the king's knights could find only three of the bandits, who were imprisoned in the palace dungeons – the rest had escaped to neighbouring towns and kingdoms.

The young prince was greatly upset by the deaths of all the innocents and went to his chamber, at the top of the very highest tower, to be alone. He sat at his window and looked out over the kingdom which would one day be his.

"I wish," said the prince, "that there was way for people who do evil deeds to be punished, no matter where they run and hide."

"Ah, but there _is_ such a way, prince," came an amused reply.

On turning, the prince found in his company a tall, grotesque creature, which grinned at him in sheer delight. Gasping in horror, the prince recoiled, but the beast seemed uninsulted.

"And you have always had the power to dispose of whoever you see fit," he went on. "At the celebration of your birth I personally gave you the gift."

"I have no such gift," the prince replied stiffly; but the Shinigami only laughed.

"No, it is only that you have no knowledge of it – thus have never used it. Have you ever wished anyone dead?"

"Of course not!" the prince cried. "I have never entertained such wicked thoughts!"

"Then that is why you have never known of your gift."

"You cursed me at my birth, demon, and have the audacity to call it a _gift_?" the prince snapped in disgust. "Leave me at once, or I shall call my father's knights to dispatch you to beyond the castle gates by force."

The Shinigami grinned broadly, showing his sharp fangs.

"If that is your wish, Your Highness," was his reply, and he disappeared as silently as he came, seeping through the stone wall like a ghost.

However, for the rest of the day, the prince thought upon the creature's words, and his promise of a sleeping, terrible power that he himself had given to the prince as a baby. As darkness fell, he saw from his window a procession of bereaved peasants by firelight, mourning the loss of mothers, fathers, children, brothers, sisters and grandparents to the hands of the murderers. Aggrieved by this scene, by the overwhelming kindness he possessed, he wished then for some peace to be brought to the mourners, for their anger to melt so that they could grieve fully for their loved ones.

He wished, only for a moment, in his own grief, that the murderers should die – as punishment for their terrible crimes.

He was tired, and forgot the creature's words; after the flaming procession had passed he retired to bed and slept soundly.

By morning the news was all throughout the kingdom and palace; every single one of the murders, both those captured in the dungeons and those who had escaped, had been found dead of natural causes that morning. There was great excitement amongst those who discussed the strange incident, but the prince was horrified and immediately returned to his chamber, bolting himself in.

"Did you think the power of which I spoke was not real?" asked the Shinigami, grinning at him from the window-ledge.

"I did not mean to kill those men!" cried the prince in anguish.

"If they are dead, then surely you must have," was the creature's reply.

"I-I don't want this power!" the prince implored. "It frightens me. Please take it back!"

"I cannot do that."

"Then why did you give it to me?!"

The Shinigami shrugged.

"Because I was bored," he replied eventually; and he spread his wings and flew away before the prince could say anything else.

The prince ran to the window and looked out, seeing the creature glide off over the kingdom and vanish into the clouds. From there, although the item of his pursuit was long gone, he could see the kingdom again, and see the same peasants who last night had grieved by firelight. Now, although clearly still saddened by their losses, they clutched at each other, rejoicing over the deaths of the murderers. At first the prince was sickened by the spectacle of them taking so much pleasure in the deaths of others, but found himself compelled to watch, and the longer he did so, the more the blow of his deed softened, and he, in his kindness, felt glad that he had been able to bring respite to those in mourning.

…After all, wasn't the kingdom better off without people like those murderers in it?

The prince sank into the chair before his mirror and looked at his reflection for a long time, but he saw only his beauty and not the ability to kill.

He saw exactly what everybody else saw.

* * *

The prince considered that, when his father died, he would be king, and that the kingdom would therefore become his. He decided that the kingdom could be a better place than it was – in fact, looking at it critically, right now it was actually somewhat… _rotting_. Those murderers he had disposed of were not the only ones of their kind – and there were others, too. Thieves. Blackmailers. Rapists.

All people Prince Light felt that he could really do without in his kingdom, when that time came; out of kindness towards those who were good and deserved to live a life that was not tainted by fear and tragedy.

It was obvious to him that others who had been present the day of the celebrations for his birth, particularly his parents, the king and queen, knew of the gift which had been given to him by the Shinigami, and had simply not told him about it; thus he decided that he would in turn keep both his knowledge and use of his powers secret. Instead he began a calculated and careful regime of wishing death upon those who he felt deserved it, and although the death toll of the guilty rose steadily higher, no suspicion was cast upon the prince, who was too good, kind and beautiful to contain the capacity to kill so callously and numerously.

Though, from that point on, he did not once consider that his actions were anything but correct – his responsibility, as the next-in-line for the throne – he found the secret hard to bear alone, and at length confided to his betrothed, the beautiful princess, though he knew he risked her repulsion.

But the princess clasped his hands and smiled.

"Then it has been you all along, my prince!" she said joyfully. "I am so glad to hear it from you. How good you are, my love."

"I did not expect you to welcome this news so happily," he replied, for he was indeed surprised.

"How could I look upon it with anything but love and adoration?" cried the princess. "Did you not know? My parents, the king and queen of a neighbouring kingdom, were travelling not so long ago, and their carriage was attacked by robbers. They were both killed – but then those same robbers died mysteriously. It was you who judged them and deemed them worthy of death, my prince. I can love you no less for that – only more!"

She clutched more tightly at him.

"I wish to help you," she went on. "One day we will be the king and queen of this kingdom, and so I should have my share of cleansing it. Share your power with me so that I may share your burden."

But the prince shook his head.

"Alas, I cannot. My gift was given to me at my birth by a God of Death. I do not know how to share it with you."

"I understand," replied the princess; and for three days she spoke no more of it.

But on the third day she returned to him and again took his hands.

"My prince, I may now serve at your side," she said. "I wished for powers like yours so that I could help you, and a strange creature descended to grant my wish, and more. For the price of half of my life, I have been granted eyesight which allows me to see the auras of those who have evil intentions or guilt. Now our judgement shall be easier and more efficient than ever."

The prince was pleased with his princess, and together they continued to rid their kingdom-to-be of all unworthy to live beneath their rule. Soon, however, though his desire for perfection burned no less brightly, he began to grow tired of being inside the palace and royal gardens at all times. He had never been outside the great gates and found, the more he judged the subjects he would in time rule over, the curiouser he grew about them and the world they inhabited. As a child this had not bothered him, for he had been content to learn of these things in books and from stories told by knights, servants and the cook – but as he grew older and, through his cleansing process, felt closer than ever to the kingdom, he decided that he wanted to see for himself the world which he was working so hard to make perfect.

So at the next dawn, the prince crept from his tower and stole from the castle, walking out through the palace gates for the first time in his life. He kept walking, eager to be away from the castle as quickly as possible, and reached the marketplace as the sun rose completely, casting its golden glow over the entire kingdom. In the months since the terrible massacre which had prompted him to begin using his gift, life amongst the peasantry had returned, by all appearances, to normal, and the young prince delighted in exploring the loud and lively marketplace. Since he had never been beyond the castle, no-one recognised him as Prince Light, and assumed by his attire that he was simply a wealthy traveller. He saw, with fascination, a great many things which he had never seen before; people making cloth, items like horseshoes from red-hot metal and little painted toys from wood. People were also selling and swapping animals like sheep and pigs and little birds in cages, while others sold fish and meat and fruit, and young children ran about to and fro, playing, chasing each other or helping their parents.

When he had seen what he thought must surely be everything, the prince decided that he would carry on; as he was becoming hungry, he stopped at a stall, at which an old woman was selling all kinds of fruit, to buy something to eat.

"How about an apple, dear?" asked the old woman, holding up a glowing red orb. "They are almost as pretty as you."

"Do they taste good?" asked the prince in reply.

"They are as sweet and fresh as any," she said. "In fact, some call them 'love apples', because they are so perfect."

And she convinced him. As he paid for his apple, she took up another and handed it to him.

"Have another, free of charge," she went on, "since you are so beautiful."

Though surprised, the prince thanked her profusely and went on his way, eating the first of his apples as he left the marketplace; as he took the final bite he came to a fork in the road, leading off in entirely different directions. To his right, the wider, clear path led downhill into a neat little village. To his left, the narrow, winding, darker path led off into the vast woods which surrounded the kingdom, and which he could see from the window of his tower chamber.

Though he knew it would be more sensible to go down into the village, he found his curiosity drawn instead towards the woods, about which he had heard many fantastic tales from his father's knights and servants – most of which he, though had believed them as a child, knew could not possibly be true. Perhaps, had it been dark, he would have more afraid to venture between the tall, massive trees, but since it was barely midday, it did not appear nearly so foreboding, and so he chose to take the left path into the woods.

The prince was immediately enchanted by this darkly beautiful grotto, unlike anything he had ever seen before, and more fascinating and captivating still than even the marketplace. The shadows of the trees twisted themselves into peculiar shapes on the forest floor, interspersed with patches of both mottled and pure golden sunlight. Vibrant moss and strange grasses formed a carpet beneath his feet, while oddly-coloured mushrooms and clusters of vivid and exotic wild flowers haphazardly threw their colour here and there. There was no sound but for the sweet singing of birds and the whispers of the trees to each other, passed between their branches by the gentle wind – perhaps speaking of this newcomer to their world, this strange boy whose beauty outshone that of any of these flowers.

There was a calm in this place which the prince had never known, for it did not exist within either the palace or anywhere in the rest of the kingdom – certainly not in the marketplace. This was a place removed from humanity—

Almost, in a way, removed from _life_.

The prince continued to walk, further and further into the woods, until he came to a small clearing, within which was a tiny pool of crystal-clear water, with a few snow-white water lilies floating upon its surface. Near this pool was a large fallen tree, having presumably been that way for a good many years, for it was covered entirely by a velvety coat of moss, with veins of dark ivy laced around it in places. The prince went to the tree and sat down on it, for he was quite tired from walking for so long; and again he thanked the old lady for her kindness as he took out the apple she had given to him for free.

It was as red as blood with a shine to it like the most polished of mirrors, so that it gleamed beneath the golden beams of the sun. The prince sank his teeth into it, taking a bite out of its flesh, leaving behind a stark white wound.

It was then that he perceived himself to no longer be alone; and, on looking up, he saw before him a strange, oddly-beautiful creature, as pale as snow. Although it looked human, the prince could not help but feel that this assumption was wrong, for there was a strange entrancing aura around it, something which he could not place, but for some reason believed it to transcend humanity. But he could not speak to ask the creature of its origin, instead struck voiceless by its presence – instead he could only gaze in wonderment at its impossibly white-as-snow skin, wild black-as-ebony hair and huge dark eyes, which gleamed yet more mirror-like than even his apple as they returned his gaze.

Having no words to speak, but desperately wanting to interact somehow with this creature, the prince finally offered out his apple. The creature tilted its head curiously, regarding the apple warily for a long moment.

"It is alright to eat," the prince insisted. "I have already taken a bite, and you see that I have not been poisoned."

The creature seemed to indeed see this, for it came to him, took the fruit and sank to its knees, beginning to eat. The prince was very content at having seemingly tamed this strange being already, and watched it finish the apple.

"Can you speak?" he asked at length.

"Of course I can speak, Your Highness," replied the creature. "And I thank you for the apple. How kind of you to give me the fruit which you were so enjoying."

Although the prince was surprised at hearing this eloquent speech come suddenly from a being which had, up until this moment, been completely mute, he was surprised further still by its address of "Your Highness".

"Why do you address me by royal terms?" he demanded.

"Are you not a prince?" asked the creature in reply. "You should not deny it, for I will know if you are lying."

"And how would you know either of those things?"

"I cannot tell you that."

"Then," pressed the prince, "what are _you_?"

"I will not part with that information either." The creature rose again. "Come, I will lead you from the forest, for if I leave you, you will become lost."

So the prince had no choice but to follow the creature, who led him back out of the forest. When they reached the path that the prince had taken into the woods to start with, it had grown dark, with the orange sun setting on the horizon. The royal castle could be seen in the distance. The prince thanked the creature for its help.

"My name is Light," the prince said. "Will you tell me yours?"

The creature shook its head.

"I cannot tell you my name, for then I would become yours," it replied, and went back into the woods, where the prince lost sight of it altogether.

The prince returned to the castle and was able to return to his tower room without being noticed; when asked by his father of his absence, he replied that he had been reading in the palace garden all day. However, he felt that he must share his tales with somebody, so again he confided in his princess.

The princess was not so pleased with his words this time.

"You should not have ventured into the woods," she said. "It is full of dangerous monsters that would steal your heart from within your breast."

The prince thought that this was silly and told her so, telling her of the strange creature he had shared his apple with.

"Does that sound like a monster to you, princess?" he asked.

"No," answered the princess. "That sounds like a fairy to me. You would do well to heed these words, my prince: Do not return to the forest."

The prince promised her that he wouldn't; but he thought of the creature he'd met, the beautiful inhuman being that his princess had called a fairy, who wouldn't tell him its name for fear of becoming his. He was compelled to return and seek the creature again, to ask once more for its name. So when everyone in the castle was asleep, the prince again crept from his tower and left through the gates, walking quickly until he came to the woods.

The forest was quite a different place by night – dark and moaning, bathed in a ghostly glow from the moon. The branches of the trees clasped at his clothes and thorns tore at his skin, and the prince grew very afraid and began to run, even though he did not know where he was going, until eventually he collapsed from exhaustion and began to weep with fear.

Soon, however, he felt himself stirred, and lifted his head to find the same fairy creature he had come in search for crouched in front of him, head tilted curiously to the side.

"Why does the prince come again so soon?" asked the fairy, more of himself.

So the prince replied that it was that he had felt compelled to see him again; the fairy took his hand and brought him to his feet. Then he led him through the dark woods to the same clearing from that day, now aglow by silver moonlight, so that the pool was like a perfect circle of dark glass.

"You see," explained the prince as they sat beside the pool, "at my birth I was graced with gifts, one of which was beauty, so I am often told that I am beautiful. But yet I see in you a beauty different to my own, and though I know not even your name, I cannot help but love you."

"His Highness is far too kind," replied the fairy graciously.

"I was blessed with kindness also, it is true," confessed the prince, "but it is not my kindness which compels me to be truthful to you. I very much love your hair, which is as black as ebony."

"Far too kind indeed," said the fairy again.

At dawn he led the prince back to the edge of the forest, so that he might return home before being missed.

"Tell me your name," begged the prince.

"I cannot," replied the fairy, and he vanished back into the forest.

So the prince returned home and was not missed; but that night he felt that he must see the creature again, so he left the castle in the dark and went back to the forest. This time the fairy was waiting for him, and again he led him to the moonlit clearing. The prince tried once more to convince the beautiful fairy of his love:

"I very much love your skin," said he, "which is as white as snow."

But the fairy merely judged him once more as being too kind; and, on leading the prince from the forest at daybreak, again refused to tell him his name.

The prince returned to the woods on the third night, and by the moonlit pool he gazed longingly at the fairy companion who sought his company nightly, yet showed little affection for him.

"I very much love your eyes," said the prince, "which are as large and glassy as mirrors."

Then the fairy looked at him thus with those same mirror-mirror eyes.

"I am disappointed," he replied. "You judge me, even love me, based entirely upon what you call my beauty – when you, who was gifted with beauty, should know better than to do so. I say this because I know you have been blessed with another gift, a terrible one which your exceptional beauty belies."

The prince gazed at him in horror, knowing he could only be speaking of his ability to wish death upon anyone he chose.

"If you look closely enough into these eyes that you claim to love," continued the fairy, "you will see not a beautiful, kind prince, but a murderer."

"How do you possess this knowledge?!" cried the prince in despair.

"I have a magic mirror which answers truthfully any question which you care to ask it."

"Then your eyes must be one and the same," said the prince quietly.

At dawn, at the edge of the forest, the prince turned to the fairy.

"Will you allow me to come again tomorrow night?" he asked. "I feel that I should go mad if you refuse."

The fairy replied that he would be waiting, again refused to part with his name, and went back into the forest.

Now, it happened that although the rest of the palace had not noticed the prince's nightly absences, the princess, who had suspected that he would not keep his promise to never return to the woods, had seen him leave for these three nights, and on the third night, she had gone to tell the king of his son's activities. The king was very angered by his son's disobedience, and so he was waiting in the tower for the prince when he now returned.

"Be thankful that your princess wishes no harm to come to you, that she relayed your tales to me!" the king cried furiously. "She worries that you have had your heart stolen by a wicked fairy!"

The prince had no explanation, and so remained silent.

"Well, I will not have my son in that forest by day or by night," the king went on. "And if there are any fairies which own your heart, I shall slay them myself. As punishment for leaving the castle, you will stay in this tower for thirteen days and thirteen nights."

And so it was. The prince was locked in his tower for thirteen days and thirteen nights, with a maid bringing him food twice a day. Otherwise he saw no-one, not even his princess, nor indeed even the Shinigami—

And certainly not the fairy who possessed, he felt, his heart.

He fell into despair, thinking that he might never see the creature again; and grew still more ill with worry when he saw his father, every morning, ride out with seven of his knights towards the forest, all carrying their swords.

When, on the thirteenth night, he was allowed to leave his tower, his first thought was to rush straight to the forest; but as he crossed the castle grounds, he heard the princess call out to him.

"My prince!" she wept. "Please do not leave me again, for I love you with all of my heart! I have given up half of my life to be at your side as your queen. I deserve your love more than this hateful fairy, who has only stolen your heart from you! But I would not steal your heart, my love – I would give you mine! If only you will stay, I will cut out my still-beating heart from my breast and give it to you in a box!"

But the prince pretended not to hear her and left; the princess fell to the ground and sobbed, but he did not return. Instead he went to the forest, where the fairy was waiting.

"I have waited thirteen days and thirteen nights," he said, "and you did not come."

"But I am here now," replied the prince, and on the way to the clearing, he explained to the fairy about his punishment. "So I do not know what I should do now," he went on. "Perhaps I can never return to my home."

Seeing that the prince was very tired and upset, the fairy led him past the clearing and on through the woods, which grew darker and thicker, until eventually they reached a great silver castle, as tall as the trees, with a wall of thick thorns around it. The fairy brought the prince into the castle and took him to a chamber where there was a large bed with red silk sheets; he allowed the prince to sleep here and left the room, going back outside the castle.

"Since you have involved yourself with him since his birth, help to make him mine," he said; and the strange black Shinigami appeared before him, grinning.

"So lowly creatures like you now ask Gods of Death for help?" he sneered.

"I can make bargains just as well as humans," replied the fairy.

"I am sure," agreed the Shinigami, "although your lifespan is worth nothing to me, since you are not human. Still, I will help, since it cannot be priceless to you. Bring me some apples."

So the fairy fetched three crimson apples and gave them to the Shinigami; he ate one, put the other one away and held out the third, digging his claws into its flesh enough so a little juice ran from it.

"Bathe this apple in your own blood and give it to the prince," he said with a leering grin. "He will lose all his memories of his power and of being a prince. He will belong completely to you."

The fairy took the apple back, beginning to thank him—

"But," the Shinigami interrupted, "there is a condition. Should the prince ever prick his finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel, he will get all of his memories back, and _you_…" He smirked blackly at the fairy. "…You will die."

The fairy looked at the apple for a long moment; then clutched it tighter.

"I will give it to him," he said.

The Shinigami only cackled and disappeared.

So the fairy rinsed the apple in his own blood to enchant it, whereupon it glowed a darker ruby than before, and the fairy fancied that he saw the mark of death within its shine. Nonetheless he took it to the prince and gave it to him when he awoke, and the prince, suspecting nothing, took a bite from it. At once he placed hand to his forehead and, becoming confused, dropped the apple and asked where he was. The fairy replied that he was where he belonged, and the prince, who longer knew that he was a prince, could find no fault with this claim.

So the prince lived happily with the fairy in the silver castle for a very long time, and they came to love one another very much. The gifted prince, now freed from both his power and his royal heritage, and knowing nothing of either, would not have traded this new existence for the power to kill, an entire kingdom to call his own, or indeed both.

As a gift, the fairy gave to the prince his magic mirror, and the prince delighted in asking it many questions, all of which it answered truthfully. In return, the prince gave to the fairy a red rose, which he had found outside the castle growing all by itself, and which did not die, but remained forever suspended in full bloom.

They lived together, and loved each other very much, and were undisturbed in their silver castle, protected from the world by thorns.

One day, however, the fairy was nowhere to be found, and the prince had grown tired of questioning his worldly mirror, and so he walked around the castle, exploring the various chambers. At length he came to the staircase of a tall tower, and was reminded of a place that he could not remember, and thus felt immovably compelled to climb the stairs. He did so, and entered a small, round room at the top, which was empty but for a single spinning wheel.

The prince, raised as royalty, had never seen a spinning wheel before, and was greatly intrigued by it, particularly by the gleaming needle at its spindle. He outstretched his hand and stepped towards the spinning wheel, letting his fingertip descend onto the needle. It pricked him and drew blood, and as the red liquid overflowed and spattered to the tower room floor, he felt that his memories had returned to him – and knew that the fairy had enchanted him and kept him as a willing prisoner for all this time.

He came down from the tower room and went to find the fairy; but upon entering the bedroom, he found his beloved creature spread on the crimson sheets of their bed, dead. The prince was heartbroken and held the fairy to him tightly, sobbing, for he knew that he was to blame for his death.

At last the prince knew that he could no longer stay in the silver castle, and that he must return home to his father's kingdom. But he could not bear to leave the fairy behind, so he had him placed into a glass coffin and took it back to the kingdom with him – he also took the mirror and the rose. When he left the castle, it vanished, as though it had never existed.

When he arrived home, he was greeted with great joy, for his lengthened disappearance had caused the kingdom to think him dead or stolen away by wicked fairies; there was great joy also, for now they would once again have a king. The king, Prince Light's father, had died while searching for him, and the queen, his mother, had died shortly afterwards from grief. His princess remained alive, and so it was decided that they would be married that very evening, so that they could begin their reign immediately.

The prince took the fairy's coffin up to the tower room which had been his own chamber and placed it upon the bed; then he went to the window and sat down, taking from his clothes the rose as he looked out over the kingdom which would now be his, and which he could continue cleansing, until it was the most perfect place in all of the world. It had begun to snow, and the prince opened the window so that he might see it better; and then he looked again at the rose. But as he held it, he once again pricked his finger, this time on a thorn, and another drop of blood fell upon the snow on the black windowsill.

So the prince thought of his fairy as he looked at the blood and wished that he might return to life, so that once more he might have his dark-eyed beauty, as red as blood, as black as ebony and as white as snow.

He lifted the lid of the coffin and placed the rose into the fairy's hands; then went to his dresser and sat down to look at his reflection, as he had before. Now he saw past his beauty, and instead saw a royal and regal young man with the crown of a king upon his brow (to be worn in grace and beauty, as was his right and royal duty), but who instead would trade it all for a strange, inhuman creature, with hair of ebony and skin of snow.

The prince sank down upon the dresser and began to sob.

* * *

The prince and the princess were married and became the king and queen of the kingdom; for the wedding, the young queen wore glass slippers and carried a bouquet of red roses, which her new husband could not bear to look at.

Beneath their rule, the kingdom flourished, and the people who they judged as good lived happy lives, while those who were deemed as bad had their lives taken from them. The young king still relied upon the mirror which the fairy had given to him, asking of it:

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall,

Who is the fairest one of all?"

To which the mirror always replied:

"You are the fairest, my young king;

Who rules so well, his subjects sing."

And so the king was assured not just of his unrivalled beauty, but also of his way as king, and his methods of perfection. However, the death toll rose higher, and the king's heart grew darker day by day, and eventually even his young queen, who had once loved him unconditionally, grew to despise him – though this hatred was in part inspired by her husband's continued love for the fairy which had stolen him away from her all those years ago.

The king visited the tower chamber, into which only he was allowed, once every twenty-three days, to gaze upon the fairy; he had not rotted, but instead stayed beautiful and still, as though merely sleeping. But to the king's surprise, the rose, which before had been enchanted so as to not die, became more withered within the dead creature's fingers, and the red petals darkened, shrivelled, and fell away one by one, until at last, at the end of the seventh year since Light had returned and become king, only one single petal remained.

The king, however, was more distracted that day by the words of his magic mirror, which he had today asked:

"Mirror, mirror, tell me true:

Have I strength in what I do?"

To which the mirror answered:

"At present, O King, you are strong,

But heed me now, this woeful song:

For you are destined soon to fade

Beneath the blow of another's blade;

From the sword, I say, of a worthy knight,

There cometh three – Red, Gold and White."

These words alarmed the young king, for he did not like to consider himself fallible, and so he decided to rid himself of these knights without ado as soon as they presented themselves, and thus was satisfied again.

That night the king ascended the tower to gaze upon the fairy; but found, to his astonishment, that the glass coffin lay empty, and that the fairy himself, now animated once more, was sitting on the windowsill, the dead rose in his hand.

The young king was overjoyed and ran to take the fairy into his arms, but found upon his doing so that the creature was cold to the touch, that he had no heartbeat and that his eyes, once so like the magic mirror he had given to him as a gift, were now dull and lifeless, bearing no reflection.

"I am the result of your wish," said the fairy. "You wished, by your own blood, for one as black as ebony and as white as snow, and so here I stand."

"But you are simply a _corpse_," replied the king in despair, "and nothing more."

"That is because you took my heart from me, and now I haven't one to call my own."

"If is a heart that you desire, then it is a heart that you shall have."

The king took the fairy to his chamber and summoned his queen before him – when she saw the fairy, she began to weep bitterly.

"My queen," said the king, "you once promised me your heart, as proof of your love for me. I now desire to hold you to your promise."

The queen dried her tears and gazed at her husband with hatred.

"My heart holds no love for you," she said, "just as yours, as black as night, holds none for me, and belongs instead to a wicked creature who took it without asking."

The king was angered by her words and so, using his power, he killed her without further thought, and she fell dead upon the floor before him. He took his sword and cut out her heart, which he gave to the fairy.

The fairy took the heart into his own breast and became alive again, warm to the touch, and the king could once more see his reflection within his large dark eyes. But alas, it lasted only moments, for the fairy's body soon rejected the queen's heart, which had not been given out of love and contained only bitter jealousy.

So the fairy died again, and was then revived by the king's blood-upon-snow wish; and although he showed no desire to leave, the king knew that the fairy no longer loved him as he once had, and that it was too much for him to hope that he ever would.

* * *

The Red Knight, the Gold Knight and the White Knight all came from a faraway kingdom, and were greatly admired for their ability and bravery.

They had heard of a small kingdom in which there was a very high mortality rate, particularly amongst adults who were otherwise healthy and had not been struck down by a disease. The three knights thought this very strange, and soon learned, by asking various people, that almost everyone who died within this kingdom had done so suddenly and unexplainably, and that, most importantly of all, they had all committed some form of crime.

Thus the knights concluded some form of magic or witchcraft, and supposed that the king was responsible, for it was he who would benefit most from having such a peaceful, crime-free kingdom to rule over.

So the Red Knight and the Gold Knight said that they would journey to this kingdom and confront the murderous king; the White Knight decided that he would stay behind. So the Red Knight and the Gold Knight set out for the kingdom with their swords drawn.

—

The young king had not yet given up on reviving the fairy completely, and on the day that his queen was buried, he summoned to him a faithful, naïve servant and wished him dead where he stood, so that he might cut out his heart and offer it to the dead fairy. This he did, and once more the fairy took the heart into his own body, but again his body rejected it, because this heart had also not been given in love. The young king was very frustrated, but at that moment, a messenger entered the room with news that a knight, who called himself only the Red Knight, was outside the castle and wished to seek counsel with him.

The king knew that first of the prophesied knights had come to vanquish him, but he kept a calm demeanour and told the messenger to bring the knight to his throne room. This was done, and the king greeted the knight from his golden throne, asking what had brought him to his kingdom.

The Red Knight drew his sword.

"I have come," said he, "to slay Your Majesty, for the crime of murdering your subjects."

Since the Red Knight was showing no pretence about his intentions, the king dropped his own charade, and killed the Red Knight where he stood with his power. Then he took the Red Knight's heart and gave it to the fairy, who once more took it, but since this heart too had not been given in love, this was rejected too – but before he died, the fairy asked why the king was so set upon reviving him.

"Because there is no other way that you will love me," replied the king; and to this the fairy gave no answer.

The king went to his mirror and asked:

"Mirror, mirror, by your art,

Tell me if there exists a heart

Which will beat within his breast

And suspend him from eternal rest."

The mirror responded thus:

"There is a heart that you may use,

But 'tis so black, that you may choose

Instead to give a heart that's white,

Belonging to a worthy knight."

On hearing this, the king decided that the only heart able to restore the fairy to life was that of the White Knight, and so he began to plot to capture him.

The next day the messenger came again to the king and said that another knight, calling himself the Gold Knight, now wished to speak with him. Again the king bid for the messenger to bring the Gold Knight to his throne room, but this time he was prepared for his deed, for he did not want to kill the Gold Knight on this occasion.

The Gold Knight came before him and, like the Red Knight, drew his sword.

"Your Majesty," said the Gold Knight, "I accuse you of slaying both your subjects and my companion, the Red Knight, since he did not return to me after coming here to dispatch you. Thus, I in turn will slaughter you."

But the king, who had expected this, called for his own knights, who disarmed the Gold Knight and captured him; locking him into the dungeons. Then the king called for his messenger and gave to him a letter to the White Knight, telling him to come to the kingdom within three days, or he would kill the Gold Knight.

When he had sent the messenger on his way, the king went to his mirror – but found, to his horror, that it had been smashed to pieces, and that the fairy was waiting for him in the dark.

"Why did you smash the mirror?" the king demanded.

"Because sometimes it is not good to see the truth," the fairy replied. "In fact, I think it might be kind of me to gouge out your eyes, to blind you completely."

"If that is what you want," said the king, "then I shall give to you, because I love you but have no way to prove it."

So he took up a large shard of mirror and plunged it into his left eye, which caused him great pain and blinded him; but the fairy stopped him from doing it to his second eye, and instead covered the wound, and then left him with his shattered truth.

On the night before the White Knight's arrival, the fairy returned to the king and bid him to accompany him, taking his hand and leading him to the forest, where they sat in the clearing that was their fairyland, by the mirror-pool in the moonlight. The fairy brought out an apple and offered it to the king, who ate it in silence.

After a while the king clasped the fairy to him.

"I love you," he said, his voice desperate.

The heartless fairy gave a nod.

"I believe you," he replied.

* * *

The White Knight came to the place where the king said that he would meet him; a large church at the outskirts of the kingdom. The White Knight was much smaller than both the Red and Gold Knights, and as pale as snow, like the fairy – and, like the fairy, he had very similar eyes, large and dark and mirror-like.

The White Knight also had no sword.

"I have no need of one, Your Majesty," he replied when the king inquired of his weapon. "And if I were you, I should not be so eager to slay me. You see, I too share your power to wish death upon whoever I like."

The king was both shocked and unnerved to hear this, and turned at once towards the fairy – who had shattered the magic mirror, should the king ask it anything that might reveal what he had done.

"You betrayed me!" the king cried.

"I said that the truth might be painful to you," replied the fairy.

"And what _is_ the truth?" the young king begged of him.

"That your wife was right in calling me a wicked creature. It is true that I grew to love you, but it was a possessive love, in that I wanted to keep you all for myself. I have always been willing to destroy you, and yet will, for I am exactly the kind of wicked fairy that your princess feared."

"But _I_ do not fear you, no matter what you are!" the king said. "That is why I give you these hearts, in the hopes of restoring you." He gestured now towards the White Knight. "The mirror told me to give to you a white heart—"

"No," interrupted the fairy, "the mirror told you that the one heart you should use might be too black for you to consider it, but nonetheless, it is that black heart which will give me life."

The king clutched at his own heart in realization – but the fairy had finished talking to him, and here transformed himself into a great dragon, which filled the church with smoke and flame. The young king drew his sword and struck at the dragon, but could not wound it, and eventually stood in the church, which was now blackened by fire, and seemed ready to accept his fate. The dragon reared back—

And the king threw his sword, striking the beast in the heart. Or where it should have had a heart.

The dragon turned back into the fairy, who smiled and pulled the sword out from his chest without so much as a grimace, throwing it aside.

The king fell to his knees and grasped at the fairy in despair.

"My heart!" he gasped. "I will give it to you! I do not care if I die! You can have it, if it will allow you to live!"

The fairy's smile faded, and he grasped the young king by his hand and raised him to his feet, where he wrapped his arms around him.

"We can no longer stay here," he said, "so we will go beyond this place together."

"My heart—"

"No, I have no want of your heart. It is enough that you offered it."

But suddenly the king gave a cry of pain, and his own sword came through his back, piercing through the fairy too, so that they were lanced together. The White Knight stepped back from them, pulling the sword out as the young king fell faint into the fairy's arms, though the fairy himself was not affected. Then the floor cracked beneath them and they both fell into the black abyss below.

Knowing that the king was no more, the White Knight went to his castle to search for the Gold Knight, releasing him from the dungeon. Then they left the kingdom together and went out into the world, for their justice was no longer needed here.

* * *

One hundred years passed, and the creature who had started it all perched upon the turret of the tallest tower of the castle, which had once belonged to a prince blessed so wonderfully at his birth that he was named Light.

The creature, who was a God of Death, was called Ryuk, and he was so easily bored that he often started stories and allowed them to run away beyond all control simply for his amusement. He had bewitched many a princess, changed many a prince into a green frog, and cursed many a poor orphan.

But his favourite story was that of the prince, gifted with grace and beauty, and given another gift by this wicked, twisted fairy godmother of his, the power to kill; and who changed his kingdom, married his princess, then fell in love with a fairy who took his heart even though he had said he had no want of it, took his freedom, and then finally took the prince himself, perhaps to Hell.

Ryuk delighted in this story; and was content to sit on the tower, fallen beyond disrepair, with vines and thick ivy tearing the stones of the castle apart, and eat his apple, as red as blood.

And so the storyteller lived happily ever after.

* * *

**Narroch: **What a fun little run that was! Robinrocks really outdid herself with this project, the Grimm style intimidates me with its cut-and-dry approach, so she really pulled this chapter together.

**RR: **Hee hee, it was actually surprisingly fun to write! Hope you all got a kick out of reading about Light as a prince, L as a fairy (of all things!) and MNM as a bunch of colour-coded knights. It's like the original _Power Rangers_, heh heh…

**Narroch: **Well, that is it for _Poison Apple_. Really, we mean it this time. No sequels or side quests or re-enactments. It's done. But that doesn't mean we are done writing _Death Note_ LxLight goodness. We are already working on our next co-written project, called _The Monster You Made_.

**RR:** Ha… yeah… Reason FOUR for posting this: To plug our new fic. Tee hee. Well, I'm only half-kidding. The first chapter of our new fic is still under construction, so we're hoping to start posting in perhaps mid-January. I can't say how much like _Poison Apple_ it will be (hopefully not too much like it, otherwise there won't be any point in you reading it!), but it's definitely LxLight and will probably end up being just as dark and fucked-up as _Poison Apple_, so…

No Disney princesses, though. :(

Although on the subject of plugging/Disney princesses, Disney are apparently coming out with two brand new fairytale-inspired movies in 2009/2010 – and I'm pretty sure they're not more-freaking-CGI, too! _The Princess and the Frog_ and _Rapunzel_, I believe. Yay! It's about time Disney went back to their roots. Thanks for the effort, Disney, but no-one gives a damn about farm cows who talk like Jay-Z. And cows are female, FYI.

(Although I did enjoy _High School Musical 3: Senior Year._ There. I said it.)

**Narroch:** Hopefully we will see you all again! Thank you once again for your support and encouragement, we really really REALLY appreciate every comment! Now, let's try and hit 2000! Woot! That would be a wonderful Christmas present. :)

**RR: **Reason FIVE: To whore for reviews. No, I'm kidding. I just hope you guys enjoyed this, since this really is the Final Farewell to something… we are kind of dragging out now, I guess. Wow, we've become like Disney even in _that_ sense. O.o Not a good thing. _Aladdin and the King of Thieves_? _The Lion King 1 and ½_? _Cinderella II_? Yeah. Didn't need to see those, thanks.

Though obviously some liked our tenacious drag-it-out regime enough to make some AMV-style trailers for the fic. We have two new ones by **aylinblack** and **indgobynoir**, as well as some more art (links on my profile)! Thankyou so much, guys!

And thankyou to everyone. We really _are_ leaving now, closing up shop, getting the hell out of your face, etc.

Catch you on the flipside, dudemeisters – and thanks for reading _Poison Apple_!

Oh, and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

RobinRocks and Narroch xXx

P.S: What's this? What's this? There's white things in the air!


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